Cardiothoracic surgery from the inside.
Surgical Hot Topics is a Society of Thoracic Surgeons podcast series for conversations inside cardiothoracic surgery. Recent episodes move between surgeon career paths, promotion and leadership, lung transplant practice, emphysema care, tumor boards, innovation, and the personal logistics behind demanding clinical work.
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Surgical Hot Topics is a professional podcast series from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons that stays close to the daily concerns of cardiothoracic surgery. It is not a broad health show. It is built around the questions surgeons ask one another: how a technique changes, how a program grows, how a career survives pressure, and how teams make difficult decisions around patients. Recent episodes show several distinct lanes inside the same feed. Same Surgeon, Different Light is the career and identity lane. Sarah Pereira and Sherry Erkman speak with cardiothoracic surgeons about paths into the field, obstacles, institutional roles, family logistics, innovation, and the qualities that make individual surgeons distinctive. In the episode with Dr. Stephanie Chang, the conversation moves through lung transplantation, call demands, childcare coordination, and the choice between cardiac and thoracic practice. With Dr. Bo Yang, the discussion turns to difficult cardiac cases, surgical ideas that develop from experience, and the iterative work of improving patient care. With Dr. Gianluigi Bisleri, the emphasis includes innovation, competition, patents, simulation tools, and the route from an idea toward a usable product. With Dr. Doug Wood, the conversation includes program building, workload, mentorship, leadership, and the less polished parts of a successful career. Thinking Thoracic supplies the clinical and technical lane. Erin Glaspie and co-hosts talk through emphysema care, chest tube strategy, ICU practice, pain management, thoracotomy, VATS, minimally invasive surgery, tumor boards, metastatic lung cancer, and how surgeons think when evidence, patient fitness, and available treatments all have to be weighed together. The feed also includes AI-generated audio from an STS blog by Dr. Sahar Sadoi on getting promoted in cardiothoracic surgery, with attention to outcomes, multidisciplinary teams, institutional credibility, and the shift from operator to program builder. The show’s strength is its proximity to the field. It lets professional conversation remain professional, but it does not flatten out the human side of the work. Surgeons speak about uncertainty, ambition, teamwork, and technical judgment without turning those subjects into slogans. Surgical Hot Topics suits listeners who want cardiothoracic surgery discussed in its own vocabulary, with clinical detail and career reality kept in the same frame.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants specialist cardiothoracic surgery conversations rather than general medical explainers. It fits people interested in operative judgment, surgical careers, thoracic surgery, transplantation, emphysema care, leadership, and program building.
What sets it apart: The show combines technical thoracic surgery discussion with unusually direct career reflection from surgeons working across the field. Its range runs from chest tube strategy and tumor board decisions to promotion, patents, call burden, mentorship, and family logistics.
Listen to leaders in cardiothoracic surgery discuss hot topics in the field. Founded in 1964, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons is a not-for-profit organization representing more than 7,800 surgeons, researchers, and allied health care professionals worldwide.Please note: The comments included in these episodes are that of the individuals involved and not necessarily that of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
The tumor board has invited orthopedic surgeons; your neat rulebook may need a chair too.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at lung transplantation as a surgical calling shaped by family logistics, scarcity, and an unfinished future.
Dr. Stephanie Chang's early fascination with the technical oddity of a cabbage becomes a useful way into a career that moves from teaching ambitions to the operating room.
A grounded conversation about surgical strengths, overuse, and the listening that keeps teams connected.
This episode moves surgical leadership into the daily work of relationships, where assertiveness, competence, creativity, and self-protection can help a person function, then become liabilities when they are pushed too far. Dr. Russ Ungerleider and Dr.
A clinician-led look at how modern emphysema surgery complicates comparisons with older trial evidence.
Emphysema care gets a grounded surgical reality check as Dr. Awori Hayanga and the hosts look at how current thoracic practice changes the way older evidence is read.
A cardiothoracic surgeon reflects on curiosity, clinical programs, and the long path from ideas to tools.
Surgical Hot Topics' Same Surgeon, Different Light looks at Dr. John Luigi Bisleri's cardiothoracic career as a story of curiosity, reinvention, and practical innovation.
Dr. Bo Yang connects difficult cardiac cases with the practical thinking behind a better surgical idea.
Same Surgeon, Different Light follows Dr. Bo Yang through the kind of practical, operating-room thinking that shapes a surgeon-scientist's work.
Brain science before it becomes a headline.
["Same Surgeon, Different Light follows Stephanie Chang, the surgical director of lung transplant at NYU Langone Transplant Institute, from a college biology class about cabbages to the operating room.", "Sarah Pereira and Sherry Erkman press her on WashU's transplant culture, where Joel Cooper and Alec Patterson shaped a training environment built around hands-on participation.", "Chang says lung transplant has shifted from unpredictable overnight calls to planned daytime surgery, helped by donor optimization and preservation windows that now reach about 24 hours.", "She also explains why NYU performed its first fully robotic lung transplant in October 2024, and why the technique still depends on patient selection, staffing, and access."]
At the STS annual meeting in New Orleans, Melanie asks Dr.
["Thinking Thoracic's emphysema episode centers on Dr.
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["Surgical Hot Topics' \"Same Surgeon, Different Light\" follows Dr.
Surgical Hot Topics' Season 6 follows Dr.
Thinking Thoracic, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons podcast, records live from STS 2026 in New Orleans with Erin Glaspie, Hari, Jeff, and Jane.
Dr.
["Surgical Hot Topics' \"Best of Lung Cancer Science\" episode reviews ESMO 2025 in Berlin through SAC-TMT, ALINA, ELEVATE, and KEYNOTE-671.", "Dr.
Brendan Stiles says CheckMate 816 delivered 65% five-year overall survival with nivolumab plus chemotherapy versus 55% with chemotherapy alone, and 95% five-year survival in the pathologic complete response subgroup.
["Surgical Hot Topics' ELCC 2025 lung-cancer special centers on Dr.
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Host Jeff Yang discusses the new STS General Thoracic Surgery Risk Calculator with Dr.
Hosts interview three recipients of the STS You Belong Scholarship about their backgrounds and career aspirations in cardiothoracic surgery.
Host Jeff Yang and Dr.
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