Dr. Dean Potter: Mayo Clinic, the division of pediatric surgery in the Children's Center at Mayo Clinic, Rochester really has a lot of experience. Since the late 90s, we've been doing this surgery. We've seen well over 1000 patients and done 500 or more operations, so we have a lot of experience. We've seen patients with all sorts of anomalies and we've repaired them and helped improve their exercise performance and their physical appearance and how they feel about themselves. It's an abnormality of the costal cartilages not necessarily the sternum. The cartilages grow abnormally and push the sternum inward. So you see a pectus excavatum get worse during a growth phase of a child.
Dr. Stephanie Polites: We strive to see patients soon after receiving a referral for pectus excavatum. Being in touch with referring physicians, as much as possible is only beneficial to the patient. And then from the referral process, they would expect prompt scheduling and coordinated scheduling for anything that the patient might need. We try to make ourselves available as soon as possible for patients who need us and we make sure that everything that they might need to have at Mayo Clinic would be coordinated.
Dr. Denise Klinkner: The minimally invasive approach is an incision on both sides for the bar to come across. And because we've added cryotherapy to our pain management program, we have an incision, a little five millimeter incision on both sides so that we can watch as we place the probe on the nerve under each rib from three through seven or four through eight, Dr. Stephanie Polites: which results in patients having a very low or no opioid requirement after surgery.
They're able to ambulate the same day and they're able to go home the next day, often without any opioids at home.
Dr. Dean Potter: The most important thing to remember is that this is a life altering defect when it's moderately severe, and you have the sternum that's compressing the right ventricle. So when a child exercises they can't increase their preload and they develop shortness of breath, or early fatigue. It's painful, it's uncomfortable. That's something that needs to be repaired so we can get these kids back to an active lifestyle and a healthy lifestyle versus avoiding exercise and being more sedentary. We've been able to streamline the process so that you don't have to spend a lot of time in Rochester. You can be evaluated, have your procedure done and go home relatively quickly. And the follow up is also been simplified so that we can get the kids and their families back to normal as soon as possible.
