thoracic medicine

Thoracic medicine is the medicine of the chest — a broad heading covering diseases of the organs inside the rib cage, with the lungs and their lining at its centre. The word thoracic simply means relating to the thorax, the part of the body between the neck and the abdomen.

In practice the term is used very much like pulmonology and respiratory medicine, and indeed many lung departments and journals carry chest or thoracic in their names. Its scope leans toward the lungs, the airways and the pleura, but it can also touch the mediastinum and the chest wall, the structures the lungs share the thorax with.

The label is best read as a family resemblance rather than a sharp boundary. Thoracic medicine, chest medicine, respiratory medicine, respirology and pulmonology all overlap heavily; the closely related surgical specialty, thoracic surgery, handles the operative side of chest disease and works hand in hand with these physicians.