Filling Out Sunken Chests
Reported June 09, 2008
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — It’s a problem that affects a child’s health, their energy and their confidence: a concave chest. One in 500 kids will be born with it. Now there’s a medical breakthrough that’s helping these kids turn things around.
Just a few years ago, even playing pool was too draining for 17-year-old Steven Seaman.
“Everyday I when I came home from school. I didn’t have any energy,” Seaman told Ivanhoe. “Nothing. I just came home, went and sat on the coach or fell asleep.”
The problem? Seaman’s chest was sinking!
Known as a concave chest, Seaman’s chest was going down, pressing on his lungs and his heart, making him tired, zapping his energy and his confidence.
“I was really self conscious about it,” Seaman said.
Pediatric surgeon Nicholas Fiore used a metal bar to bring Seaman’s chest back up where it’s supposed to be.
“Probably the best way to think of it might be an internal cast or a strut basically which re-conforms the chest from inside,” Nicholas Fiore, M.D., a pediatrician at Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, Nev., told Ivanhoe.
Dr. Fiore made a small incision on both sides of Seaman’s chest. The bar is tunneled underneath the skin and the beast bone.
“The breast bone is sitting on top of this [bar] and then it is rotated and the breast bone is pushed up,” Dr. Fiore said.
Sounds painful.
“Just imagine pressure against your chest,” Seaman said. “It was painful. I couldn’t move for a few days.”
Seaman kept the metal bar inside his chest for three years and now, you can see the difference! Seaman could feel the difference within days.
“I felt a lot better about everything,” Seaman said. “I would go and hang out with friends, you know, go swim, go have fun.”
Exactly what this teen should be doing. Before this surgery, doctors had to perform open chest surgery, cutting through muscle and bone. The recovery time then was months, not days.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Ashlee Seymour
Director of Media Relations
Sunrise Children’s Hospital
ashlee.seymour@hcahealthcare.com
(702) 731-8288