Elsevier

The Annals of Thoracic Surgery

Volume 68, Issue 3, September 1999, Pages 1082-1083
The Annals of Thoracic Surgery

Case Reports
A complication of pectus excavatum operation: endomyocardial steel strut

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-4975(99)00655-4Get rights and content

Abstract

An 18-year-old patient who had correction of pectus excavatum deformity in our department 4 years earlier was admitted because of stabbing chest pain. He had not attended to postoperative controls and had not come for extraction of the steel strut, although he had been contacted. He was diagnosed to have a broken steel strut, and the strut was noted to be embedded in the myocardium. This unreported complication of pectus excavatum operation forced us to review sternal support techniques.

Section snippets

Comment

There are many different techniques for the correction of pectus excavatum deformity. Some surgeons prefer the salvage of perichondrium and anterior wedge osteotomies to sternum, thereby having fixation by suturing [3]. But most surgeons prefer internal fixation of the sternum to prevent paradoxical respiration and redepression, especially if the patients are elderly and athletic 4, 5.

Stainless steel struts of appropriate size placed retrosternally for internal fixation are extracted after 6

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