Functional Outcomes After Muscle-Sparing Fixation of Flail Chest Injuries.

Objectives: To present outcomes in a multicenter review of a large number of flail chest patients.

Design: Retrospective case series.

Setting: One urban Level I and 1 urban Level II trauma center.

Utility of three-dimensional computed tomography for the surgical management of rib fractures.

Background: Surgical stabilization of flail chest is increasingly recognized as a valid approach to improve pulmonary mechanics in selected trauma patients. The use of two-dimensional (2D) computed tomography (CT) has become almost universal in the assessment of blunt chest trauma and multiple rib fractures. We hypothesized that three-dimensional (3D) CT adds valuable information to the preoperative plan for fixation of rib fractures.