In the year 1594, Bauhinus described in the early medical literature a seven-year-old boy with a marked depression of the sternum and ensiform cartilage.1 This was the first clinical treatise on the congenital and developmental deformities of the anterior chest wall which have since been generally classified into two categories: the depression deformity (pectus excavatum) and the protrusion deformity (pectus carinatum). Not until 1911 was surgical repair of this malformation attempted,2 and only in recent years have adequate surgical corrective techniques been developed. This paper presents bone chip plastic reconstruction as a simplified operative procedure for an anatomical, physiological, and functional correction of these congenital chest deformities.
Classification and Etiology
Pectus excavatum is a funnel-shaped depression of the anterior chest wall whose deep apex is the xiphoid and whose walls are the posteriorly displaced sternum and attached costal cartilages. Its pattern can be symmetrical or asymmetrical in which