Highlights of the 2018 Annual Meeting of American Association for Thoracic Surgery

The 98th annual meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) was held in San Diego, California from April 28th to May 1st, 2018. This year's conference focused on current research hotspots of thoracic surgery and released a number of research results, including an international multicenter study on early-stage lung cancer, big data research on lung cancer diagnosis and treatment guidelines, comparison of curative effect between surgery and stereotactic body radiotherapy, immunotherapy for lung cancer, neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy for esophageal cancer, postoperative recurrent patterns and risk factors of esophageal cancer, new surgical treatment for benign esophageal disease, tracheal surgery experience, lung transplantation-related research progress, and the application of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to lung transplantation. In this article, research results released at the meeting in different subgroups were collected and reported.