Why Is Surgery for a Barrel Chest Not Yet Done?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Why is barred chest surgery in such a gray zone? It seems like surgeons are completely belittling it and not even trying to do anything about it.

A:Barrel chest surgery is not in the gray zone. It literally is in a no zone as it has never been performed before and understandably it has increased risk and unknowing benefits of performing the procedure. Only now is lower rib surgery becoming more mainstream but anything above rib 10 is completely unknown to any surgeons except the very few who have ever done it…. which to my knowledge is only me. The question is not whether it can be done whether would it be worth the surgical effort and potential risk to do so for primarily an aesthetic concern. Another words how much benefit can actually be obtained given the effort involved. Until one day the procedure is actually done on a patient those answers will remain unknown. But you can’t fault surgeons for not willing to take on those risks when the benefit is not known.

I think the fundamental problem with barrel chest surgery is to obtain a good improvement you have to treat all of the ribs probably from #4 down to #9 on both sides. That would be quite a surgical undertaking as well as the risks of pneumothorax x 10. That might be I’m to consider if we knew the good benefits could be obtained. But given that we don’t you can see the great hesitancy to do so.

Dr. Barry Eppley

World-Renowned Plastic Surgeon