Flail chest after blunt trauma usually requires good pain control and positive pressure support. Continuous negative extrathoracic pressure (CNEP) causes a splinting effect around the anterior chest wall and upper abdomen which increases functional residual capacity and improves lung mechanics. We report an 82-year-old woman with flail chest after cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She underwent me...

We eagerly read and appreciate your weighty journal’s hint on the subject flail chest in the April 2010 issue [1]. We wish to respectfully comment on this subject, since we strongly suppose that some of our observations and experience of flail chest in our centre, with a heavy workload to contend with, [2] may be of great interest and useful in this field. Flail chest is a problem whose definit...

The management of flail chest continues to evolve as scientific evidence and surgical experience accumulates. Flail chest injuries that span the sternum present a rare and complicated injury pattern that can be challenging to manage both medically and surgically. Our patient is a 69-year-old involved in a high-speed motor vehicle crash with respiratory failure secondary to an anterior flail che...

Surgical stabilization of flail chest is a controversial operation, but recent data has shown that selected patients benefit from it. We describe a simple and practical method of operative stabilization of flail chest using a prosthetic mesh and methylmethacrylate anchored to the ribs and sternum. The methylmethacrylate-mesh complex is inexpensive, can be extracted electively as soon as full th...

Surgical rib fixation in the setting of flail chest has proven benefits, while surgical fixation of non-flail fractures is controversial. Chest wall reconstruction with rib fixation techniques can improve pain, preserve breathing mechanics and prevent complications from lung herniation. However, there are limitations to this technique. With this case report, we describe plate fracture and screw...

BACKGROUND Flail chest injuries are associated with high mortality and morbidity. Despite evidence that operative repair of flail chest is beneficial, it is rarely done. We sought to create a simple risk score using available preoperative covariates to calculate individual risk of mortality in flail chest. METHODS A logistic regression model was trained on Ontario Trauma Registry data to gene...

Blunt chest wall trauma is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, especially in the presence of a flail chest where paradoxical inward movement of the flail segment in inspiration is found. Patients with a flail chest require aggressive pain control, pulmonary toilet, and often intubation and mechanical ventilation to establish an internal pneumatic stabilization of the flail segment. This m...

STOVE-IN chest is a relatively uncommon injury. There have been only three admissions to the Sunderland Group of hospitals during the period I956-60 and this despite the fact that we serve a population of 390,ooo, in an area where there is a considerable amount of heavy industry, including shipbuilding and coalmining. Traffic passing through the town in the summer months to the seaside and coas...

Flail chest is an uncommon condition that generally arises due to a significant impact to the chest, resulting in multiple fractures of the anterior and posterior ribs. This force may be much less if the bones are weakened for any reason, in osteoporosis or myeloma for instance. We describe a case of flail segment that arose secondary to a large sternal abscess resulting from methicillin-resist...