ABSTRACT
Rapid development of technology associated with laparoscopic surgery in the late 1980s and 1990s allowed for much more advanced diagnostic and therapeutic procedures to be performed. These developments, including high-resolution and digital cameras, smaller instruments and better optics, have enabled pediatric surgeons in the twenty-first century to apply minimally invasive techniques to the majority of procedures in neonates, infants and children. One area in which major advances have been made is in the use of thoracoscopy to perform even the most complex intrathoracic procedures. Far from the limited diagnostic evaluations and small biopsies performed by Rodgers and others in the late 1970s and early 1980s, even the most complex thoracic procedure, the correction of a tracheo-esophageal fistula (TEF), can now be safely and efficiently performed using thoracoscopic techniques.
