Injuries to the ribs can occur anywhere on the ribcage, including the back and the sides. Even a single broken rib can make breathing very painful. As a result, people with a broken rib tend to avoid breathing deeply, which can lead to fluid build-up in the lungs, infection, and even death.
The surgeons' view, via a fiber-optic camera and a thoracoscope inserted low in the chest, shows the curved ribs, the reddish intercostal muscles between them, and a fixation plate in the process of being attached to a rib to fix, or stabilize, it. After the bolts are secured, the thin cables they were suspended on are withdrawn through a small incision.
The fixation plate is attached to the inner surface of the rib using fiber optics, very small incisions, and a procedure Dr. Randy Haluck compares to building a ship in a bottle.
As chief of minimally invasive surgery at the Penn State Medical Center, Dr. Randy Haluck had a lot of experience using a thoracoscope to do surgery in the chest through very small incisions. He thought the scope could be adapted to repair broken ribs in a way that was much less traumatic to patients than the conventional procedure.
