Late cardiac tamponade following Nuss procedure for pectus excavatum.

The Nuss procedure is a recently developed technique for correction of pectus excavatum. A 23-year-old female patient presented at our emergency department with clinical signs of cardiac tamponade, which required an emergency procedure. Sixteen months ago, she underwent the Nuss procedure with a single bar. Her preoperative Haller index was 5. We report on a case of delayed recurrent cardiac tamponade that occurred 16 and 18 months after the patient underwent the Nuss procedure; in this case, we treated the patient with pericardiocentesis the first time and performed pericardial window creation with bar removal the second time. She was discharged on day 10 in good condition and follow-up chest radiographs showed no fluid collection.