A 24 year old man presented to the emergency department with clinical signs of cardiac tamponade requiring emergency surgery. The cause was a sternal wire from a pectus excavatum repair two years previously that had fractured and migrated through the pericardium causing an epicardial injury and a haemopericardium.

OBJECTIVE Pectus excavatum is relatively common congenital chest deformity that is often accompanied by physical and psychological impairment. The surgical methods for pectus excavatum repair are the subject of some controversy. We review our experience using a procedure in which the introduction of exogenous material is unnecessary. METHODS From July 1993 to March 2008, 113 patients underwen...

OBJECTIVES In patients undergoing corrective surgery for pectus excavatum, there is evidence of improvement in cardiopulmonary function. It is unclear how much of this improvement is attributable to improved chest wall function. Thus, we observed changes in chest wall function in response to an incremental load exercise pre- and postoperatively. METHODS Using optoelectronic plethysmography, t...

We report the surgical case of a 25-year old man admitted because of progressive dyspnoea and stabbing chest pain, who had undergone a pectus excavatum correction using a retrosternal strut 8 years previously. The computerized tomography scan showed that the right tip of the pectus bar had migrated across his right ventricle and tricuspid valve into the right atrium. Intraoperatively, it was co...

We have observed an elevation of body temperature during surgical repair of pectus excavatum. To document this phenomenon and attempt to prevent it, we undertook a combination retrospective-prospective study. The retrospective arm included an analysis of the anesthetic records of patients undergoing repair of pectus excavatum during the past 5 years and included 22 boys and 3 girls. Body temper...

hereditary spastic paraplegias are highly heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorders with some special mutations. we report on a patient with pescavus, distal a myotrophy, hyper extended fingers, and pectus excavatum. neurological examination showed that he had proximal lower limbs weakness with a positive gower sign, exaggerated lower limbs deep tendon reflexes with spasticity, distal muscle wa...