A 46-year-old male patient with swelling and pain in the right chest wall was admitted to our clinic. The lesion originating from the second, third and fourth ribs was resected en bloc via right thoracotomy (Figs 1 and 2). The defect was closed using-prolene mesh. Pathological examination revealed a fibrous dysplasia. Figure 1: Axial and coronal CT images showing the lesion originating from the...

PURPOSE Thoracoscopic lobectomy in infants requires advanced minimally invasive skills. Simulation-based education has the potential to improve complex procedural skills without exposing the patient to undue risks. The study purposes were (1) to create a size-appropriate infant lobectomy simulator and (2) to evaluate validity evidence to support or refute its use in surgical education. MATERI...

Thoracic trauma can involve serious injuries of both the rib cage and thoracic organs. The leading cause of thoracic trauma is motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). Rib fractures are often associated with injuries to the underlying organs. This paper investigates the situations in which lung, liver, and spleen injuries occur with associated rib fractures. Side impacts were found to have corresponding o...

Age related changes in rib cage geometry were found from measurements made on chest radiographs from 38 individuals aged from 1 month to 31 years and on computed tomography (CT) scans in another 28 individuals, aged from 3 months to 18 years. Chest radiographs were taken for minor respiratory symptoms or fever and only films showing no abnormality were used. CT scans were obtained in children u...

Unlike the rest of the axial skeleton, which develops solely from somitic mesoderm, patterning of the rib cage is complicated by its derivation from two distinct tissues. The thoracic skeleton is derived from both somitic mesoderm, which forms the vertebral bodies and ribs, and from lateral plate mesoderm, which forms the sternum. By generating mouse mutants in Hox5, Hox6 and Hox9 paralogous gr...

Acute hyperinflation causes the inspiratory muscles to operate at shorter than normal lengths. The ability of these muscles, in particular the diaphragm, to lower intrathoracic pressure is therefore reduced. Skeletal muscles, however, adapt to chronic shortening, and animals models of emphysema have shown that with chronic hyperinflation, the diaphragmatic muscle fibres lose sacromeres. As a re...

A 3D rib cage model helps to study anatomical structures in some medical applications such as biomechanical and surgical operations. Its quality directly depends on rib cage segmentation if it is reconstructed from image data. This paper presents an optional segmentation method based on K-means clustering. It uses a hierarchical concept to control the clustering, and it organizes clustered regi...

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...

It was recently demonstrated that clownfishes produce aggressive sounds by snapping their jaw teeth. To date, only the onset of the sound has been studied, which raises the question, what structure is involved in sound radiation? Here, a combination of different approaches has been used to determine the anatomical structure(s) responsible for the size-related variations observed in sound durati...