Minimally invasive Nuss technique allows for repair of recurrent pectus excavatum following the Ravitch procedure: report of 12 cases.

This work aimed to determine the efficacy of recurrent pectus excavatum repair using a minimally invasive Nuss procedure. We performed a secondary repair in 12 patients with recurrent pectus excavatum by using the minimally invasive Nuss procedure. Prior repairs had been performed using the Ravitch procedure in all cases. The values obtained in preoperative pulmonary function tests were less than 80% of the normal values. The median duration of surgery was slightly longer than that of the primary surgeries. The procedural complications included hemothorax (16.7%) and pleural effusion (25.0%). None of the patients developed a pneumothorax, pericarditis, pneumonia, wound infection, or immune rejection. There were no deaths or cardiac perforations. Exercise tolerance increased in 7 of the 12 cases. We achieved excellent results from surgical correction using the Nuss procedure in these 12 patients who showed recurrent pectus excavatum after failed repair surgery using the Ravitch procedure.