Traditional treatment: foreign surgery to correct funnel chest began in the 1970s, and such surgery was also carried out in the 1980s in China. Surgery for young children at a young age gradually matured in the 1990s. In the past, the conventional method of treating funnel chest was to make a longitudinal and transverse incision of a window of about 10 centimeters in the anterior chest, remove the deformed ribs and then fix them with steel pins. Surgery is traumatic, bleeding, and because the integrity of the child's thorax is destroyed, lung function is severely affected in a short period of time, which can lead to bronchial obstruction and pulmonary atelectasis resulting in severe hypoxia.
Additionally, after the surgery, the corrected thorax is not grown and fixed before, because of the independent breathing movement will affect the bone growth and lead to the failure of the surgery. This type of surgery is difficult to deal with in the perioperative period, and the surgical risk is very high, with many complications. The traditional treatment method at home and abroad mostly adopts the steel pin sternal elevation surgery, which has unsatisfactory results. At present, the practiced and improved surgery adopts double steel plate sternal elevation method, and the level of surgery is obviously improved with good effect. In fact, the effect of surgery also depends on the level of medical equipment, such as ventilators, monitors, lung function monitoring means. With the continuous development of medical technology, advanced medical equipment and personnel training level, the complications of this type of surgery has been significantly reduced, but the operation of children in the lower age group is still a certain risk, there will be some complications.
Now the treatment method: at present our country's most advanced thoracoscopic assisted funnel chest corrective surgery--
The method is in the pediatric side of the chest under the axillary midline part of the cut a 2 cm small incision, with the thoracoscope to the thoracic cavity peeling and guiding, and then a homemade corrective equipment to the opposite side of the penetration of the openings and then flipped, so that the purpose of correction. The purpose of correction is realized. The length of the surgical incision is about 15-20 centimeters, and it is necessary to cut off the diseased rib cartilage and do sternal osteotomy, which causes great surgical damage, much bleeding, obvious pain and slow recovery. Regardless of the type of surgery due to the need to cut off the ribs, destroying the integrity of the thorax, lung infection, pulmonary atelectasis resulting in hypoxia caused by brain damage surgical risk still exists.
New technique to treat funnel chest without opening chest
Now there are doctors who use the technique without opening chest to treat funnel chest: they only cut two 2-centimeter incisions in the child's anterior chest wall, and then use a steel plate shaped according to the patient's thorax and padded on the back of the patient's sternum to turn it over and the two ends of the plate are supported on the ribs on both sides of the patient's chest, to correct the child's funnel chest deformity. It is a new technique without opening the chest, with little injury and less bleeding. During the operation, the steel plate can be shaped according to the different degrees of the patient's thoracic deformity, which is more adapted to the individual differences and makes the operation result better. After the operation, the patient has little pain and can leave the bed the next day, and the hospitalization time is short and the hospitalization cost is low, which is a good method for the treatment of funnel chest in modern times.
Adaptable age for surgery
Funnel chest belongs to the congenital malformation of bone development, which is not caused by lack of calcium and malnutrition as people often think, and its etiology is still not very clear.
In the 1970s, the youngest patients who underwent this kind of surgery abroad were about 4 to 5 years old. At present, the optimal age for surgery depends on the conditions of the hospital and the level of the surgeon. Experts believe that according to the characteristics of pediatric bone, the best time to correct the funnel chest is at the age of 2 to 4 years, and the operation at a lower age may not affect the development of children. At present, most of the children aged 1 to 3 years old do this kind of surgery, the effect is very good.