The Department of Thoracic Surgery of West China Hospital was founded in 1954, one of the earliest thoracic and cardiovascular surgery department established in China. The department was authorized to provide programs for master education of clinical medicine in 1978 and programs for doctoral education of clinical medicine in 1993. The department founded the Chinese Journal of Clinical Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in 1994, and the Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer in 1997. In 2006, the department began to serve as the Training Base for Specialist Physicians of Thoracic Surgery appointed by the Ministry of Health of China. The department was awarded the "National Key Discipline" in 2007 and the National Clinical Key Specialty of the Ministry of Health in 2011. In 2018, the department ranked the third on the Specialty Reputation Ranking of Hospitals across the country. 

Featured medical technologies: the Department of Thoracic Surgery of West China Hospital has a glorious history and keeps its unique characteristics in all circumstances. 

• In the 1980s, the department took the lead in conducting surgical treatments on locally advanced lung cancer (superior vena cava replacement, partial left atrial resection, pulmonary artery trunk/partial aortic resection under cardiopulmonary bypass). These technologies were quite advanced both domestically and internationally; 
• The department is a pioneer to adopt the layered esophageal anastomosis technology to treat esophageal cancer, which greatly reduces the incidence of anastomotic leakage. This reaches international advanced standard. In addition, the intrathoracic semi-mechanical esophagogastric anastomosis technology is also taking the lead in the world. 
• Especially in recent decade, complete thoracoscopic procedures initiated by the department, including the single-direction thoracoscopic lobectomy and non-grasping en-bloc mediastinal lymph node dissection (MLND), the suction-compressing angiorrhaphy technique (SCAT) which overcome the problem of managing massive bleeding during thoracoscopic pulmonary resection. These techniques have greatly generalized and popularized the complex thoracoscopic surgeries around the country. Currently, more than 90% lung cancer resection and over 70% of esophagectomies and mediastinum surgeries in the department are performed with minimally invasive approach. The department also performed the first case series of thoracoscopic bronchovascular double sleeve lobectomy for central lung cancer, which broke through the restricted area of thoracoscopic lung surgery. In addition, the department also initiated sequential off-pump double lung transplantation in China, which is proved to be a huge success.

Talent team: There are 14 physicians in the department holding senior professional and technical titles. As many as 78% of its clinical physicians have doctoral degrees. There are 5 doctoral tutors and 8 master tutors in the list of staff. Many are taking major posts at different domestic professional associations, of whom one enjoys special allowance from the State Council, three are listed as Sichuan Provincial academic and technical leaders and three are listed as academic and technical leaders of Sichuan Provincial Health Department. The department now has 148 approved general-purpose beds and 4 ICU beds. The department is possessing 12 medical groups, receiving 46,000 outpatients and performing more than 4,000 cases of surgeries annually.