The Senning-Johannson technique for the correction of the funnel chest in 54 patients

Funnel chest is the most frequent malformation of the chest wall and many technical solutions have been proposed for surgical correction. It is rarely familiar, and often constitutional but the exact pathogenesis is unclear. Clinical signs are various but a direct relation between degree of malformation and symptoms cannot always be found. The authors describe technical details and results of the Senning-Johannson technique used in 54 patients. Lateral chest X-ray simply allows the measurement of internal sterno-vertebral distance (DSV) and quantifies the pathological findings and gives a control of the results. The mean DSV was 5.8 cm preoperatively and the improvement obtained ranged from 1 to 9 cm. The mean improvement of DSV was 74%. Serious postoperative complications were, one hemopericardium, one hemothorax, one pneumothorax and two pneumonia but all complications were successfully treated with no mortality. The subjective result after surgical procedure was good for 70% of the patients and satisfactory for 24%. The authors believe that the described technique is simple, sure and leads to good results.