objective: thoracic trauma may be a life-threatening condition. flail chest is a severe chest injury with high mortality rates. surgery is not frequently performed and, in literature, data are controversial. the authors report their experience in the treatment of flail chest by an extracortical internal-external stabilization technique with kirshner’s wires (k-wires). methods: from 2010 to 2015...

We report a case of a 57-year-old male who presented with an inoperable chest wall sarcoma due to numerous pulmonary metastases and was treated with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The patient subsequently developed refractory bleeding from the chest wall tumor requiring palliative chest wall resection and reconstruction. The patient made an uneventful recovery however died from metastatic ...

Most injuries to the chest wall with residual deformity do not result in long-term respiratory dysfunction unless they are associated with pulmonary contusion. Indications for operative fixation include flail chest, reduction of pain and disability, a chest wall deformity or defect, symptomatic nonunion, thoracotomy for other indications, and open fractures. Operative indications for chest wall...

Poland’s syndrome is a rarely encountered congenital deficiency involving chest wall and breast deformity associated with hand anomalies. Chest wall reconstruction is necessary if the bony thorax is involved. We present the use of a homologous preserved costal cartilage for reconstruction of the chest wall in an infant with Poland’s syndrome, the use of which provided optimal chest wall stabili...

Chondrosarcoma of the chest wall is a rare primary neoplasm found to occur in elderly men. Patients present with an enlarging, painful, anterior chest wall mass arising from either the vicinity of the costochondral junction or the sternum. Treatment includes wide resection with appropriate chest wall reconstruction. We report an unusual presentation of this uncommon tumor occurring as a huge ch...

Chest wall reconstruction after rib resection is essential to ensuring chest wall stability, avoiding flail chest and pulmonary hernia, and improving pulmonary function. Traditionally, a synthetic mesh and a musculocutaneous flap have been used to bridge the chest wall defect. However, a risk of secondary prosthesis infection exists. Acellular dermal collagen mesh implants (PermacolTM) are indi...

Background Flail chest is the most serious complication that may occur after thoracic trauma. In this article, we present a case of flail chest caused by blunt chest trauma, which presented dramatic clinical improvement following rib fixation and chest wall reconstruction. Case Description A 53-year-old male patient with flail chest because of the trauma who had been followed in intensive care ...

abstract background: chest wall irradiation for early breast cancer affects forced vital capacity (fvc), forced expiratory volume in the first second of expiration (fev1) and may change peripheral oxygen saturation (spo2). in our institute chest wall is irradiated with a four field technique: two tangential and two oppositional anterior and posterior supraclavicular fields. regional recurrence ...

Hydatid disease (HD) is an infectious disease caused by echinococcosis. Hydatid cyst (HC) most commonly invades the liver (60-70%) and the lungs (20-25%). However, other parts of the body and even unusual locations can be infected, mimicking a benign lesion that could be easily missed. Primary HC of the chest wall is extremely rare, even in countries where echinococcosis is endemic. We he...

A 36-year-old man presented to our emergency department complaining of right-sided chest pain after a motor vehicle collision. Physical examination revealed bilateral breath sounds and a supine chest radiograph was unremarkable. A 10-5 MHz linear transducer (SonoSite MicroMaxx, Bothell, WA, USA) was used to obtain ultrasound images at the patient’s left anterior chest wall [Figure 1], right ant...