Abstract
Pectus excavatum. the most common congenital chest wall deformity, is manifested by deformity of the costal cartilages resulting in a depressed and often rotated sternum. Surgical correction of this disease is frequently indicated for aesthetic improvement. The most popular current repair involves resection of abnormal costal cartilages, sternal osteotomy and mobilization, followed by fixation of the sternum in the corrected position.12 patients have been operated upon for pectus excavatum by the Adkins` method for 8 years in our hospital and the results were as follows: 1. All the patients were male. Age distribution was 2-26 years[average 10.8 years] and 69.2% were below 7 years. 2. The deformity was found at neonate or infant in the most of the patients [92.3 %] 3. The subjective symptoms were frequent URI[35.7%], dyspena on exertion[21.4%], chest dis comfort[7.1%], asthma [7.1%] and most of the patients didn`t like their appearance. 4. Combined diseases were urticaria in 2 cases, bilateral cryptomhism and pulmonary tuberculosis in 1 case each other. 5. Welch index ranged from 1.7 to 5.0 with the average of 3.47. 6. Postoperative complications were pneumothorax [45.5%], wound infection [36.4%] and skin necrosis [18.2%]. Although the period of follow-up was short in some cases there was no relapse.