Thoracic Surgery
Heart, lung, and esophageal surgery, entered integrated from medical school or after general surgery, with among the longest training in medicine.
- Training
- 6 years
- Entry
- Direct from medical school
- Apply through
- ERAS
- Match through
- NRMP Main Match
- Accredited programs
- 36
Among the 31 specialties
What sets Thoracic Surgery apart most is training length: 6 years, longer than 28 of 31.
Every rail is one dot per specialty, ordered lowest to highest, so all six read as one profile. Dots stack where specialties share a value. Thoracic Surgery’s is the coloured dot — point anywhere along a rail to name the others.
- Programs
- Programs: 36. More than 4 of the 31 specialties reporting; fewer than 26. Reported range across specialties: 5 to 820.
- Training length
- Training length: 6 years. Longer than 28 of the 31 specialties reporting; shorter than 1. Reported range across specialties: 2 years to 7 years.
- Interviews per position
- Interviews per position: 3.3×. More than 14 of the 28 specialties reporting; fewer than 9. Reported range across specialties: 1.0× to 5.0×.
- Residents in training
- Residents in training: 364. More than 5 of the 30 specialties reporting; fewer than 24. Reported range across specialties: 99 to 40,131.
- States and territories
- States and territories: 20. More than 3 of the 31 specialties reporting; fewer than 27. Reported range across specialties: 4 to 52.
- First-year resident pay
- First-year resident pay: $69K. Higher than 21 of the 28 specialties reporting; lower than 6. Reported range across specialties: $60K to $73K.
Programs ranges from 5 to 820 across 31 specialties. The middle half sit between 82 and 210.
Training length ranges from 2 years to 7 years across 31 specialties. The middle half sit between 3 years and 5 years.
Interviews per position ranges from 1.0× to 5.0× across 28 specialties. The middle half sit between 2.7× and 3.5×.
Residents in training ranges from 99 to 40,131 across 30 specialties. The middle half sit between 718 and 6,616.
States and territories ranges from 4 to 52 across 31 specialties. The middle half sit between 35 and 46.
First-year resident pay ranges from $60K to $73K across 28 specialties. The middle half sit between $67K and $69K.
Every accredited program
Grouped by state, alphabetical within each. We don’t rank programs. Open any row for its deadlines, salary, visas, and reported outcomes.
36 across 20 states
What the sources report
Published by the bodies that collect them. Each figure carries the year it describes, which is not always the year it was published.
Most recent reported
- Thoracic Surgery - Integrated program signals availableApplicants to participating Thoracic Surgery - Integrated residency programs in the 2027 MyERAS application season
- 4signalsAAMC, 2027 MyERAS application season
- ACGME accredited program countAll programs on the official ACGME Thoracic Surgery–Integrated roster
- 36programsACGME, 2026-2027
- Advanced Thoracic Surgery–Integrated tracksThoracic Surgery–Integrated advanced tracks
- 0tracksNRMP, 2026-2027
- Categorical Thoracic Surgery–Integrated tracksThoracic Surgery–Integrated categorical tracks
- 39tracksNRMP, 2026-2027
- NRMP live directory track countThoracic Surgery–Integrated tracks linked to the current ACGME roster
- 39tracksNRMP, 2026-2027
- Reserved physician Thoracic Surgery–Integrated tracksThoracic Surgery–Integrated reserved physician tracks
- 0tracksNRMP, 2026-2027
Specialties that measure like this one
Nearest on the six measures above — length, competitiveness, scale, geography, pay. Not a claim that the work is similar, and not a recommendation.
- Vascular SurgeryOpen and endovascular treatment of arterial and venous disease, entered integrated from medical school or after general surgery.
- Plastic SurgeryReconstruction and aesthetics across the whole body, entered integrated from medical school or independently after another surgical residency.
- Internal Medicine-PediatricsFour years to full board eligibility in both adult and pediatric medicine, built for care that does not stop at the transition to adulthood.
- Radiation OncologyTreating cancer with targeted radiation, combining physics and oncology in a small, clinic-based specialty with long patient relationships.
How each measure is made
- Training length
- How many years the accredited residency itself runs. Specialties you enter at PGY-2 need a separately matched preliminary or transitional year before this clock starts, and any fellowship comes after it.Accredited length across programs in this specialty. A few specialties run both lengths — Emergency Medicine has three-year and four-year programs — and are shown as a range.
- Residents in training
- How many residents the specialty holds at once, counting every training year at every program. It is a measure of the field’s size rather than of its annual intake — divide by the training length for a rough sense of how many start each year.Total approved positions across all training years, summed across programs.
- Programs
- How many separately accredited residency programs the specialty has. Each one is its own application, its own interview, and its own line on your rank list.Accredited programs currently published in our directory.
- States and territories
- How many states and territories have at least one program. This is the geography question: a specialty with 400 programs across 20 states is far more concentrated than one with 100 spread across 45.Distinct states with at least one published program.
- First-year resident pay
- What you are paid during your first year of training, before any of it becomes an attending salary. The spread across specialties is narrow — this is not the number that separates them.Median PGY-1 stipend across programs — what you are paid during residency, not what the specialty earns afterwards.
- Interviews per position
- How many applicants a program interviews for each position it offers — at 4×, a program with ten spots interviews about forty people. It is a read on how far the field narrows at the interview stage, not on how many applied.Median interviews a program conducts for each position it offers.