Thoracoplasty According to Wilms

Thoracoplasty is a type of plastic and reconstructive surgery of the chest wall, which involves changing its shape and volume for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes. Another name is plastic surgery of the chest and abdominal wall.

Thoracoplasty involves partial or complete excision of the ribs or pectoral muscles and replacement of the removed structures with a flap on a “U”-shaped vascular anastomosis. The essence of the method is to open the patient's chest and remove part of the ribs (pectoral muscles) to create space for moving the organs of the chest cavity (heart, large vessels, lungs and bronchi). Thus, it is possible to increase the volume of the lungs, improve their ventilation and prevent a decrease in vital capacity of the lungs (VC) in patients in the terminal stage of respiratory failure. Thoracoplasty was first developed and applied by the largest representative of Swiss surgery, Professor Theodor Marshall in 1908. In our country, the very first open corporoplasty was performed by Professor Yuri Kishteevich in 1883.