Skip to content
← Back to Issue

Spontaneous rib fracture improved with callus following acute severe cough in pregnancy

Spontaneous rib fracture

Clinical Image • doi:10.4328/ECAM.54 • Published: 24.05.2015 • Eu Clin Anal Med 2015;3(2):00

Authors

Rasih Yazkan1
Affiliations

1Department of Thoracic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Türkiye.

Fracture healing is an exceptional wound healing response in which the repair process takes place with production of new bone tissue. There are three consecutive and interconnected phases: inflammatory response, repair, and remodeling phases.1 Coughing is usually self-limited and uncomplicated, but sometimes it can be associated with complications; one of these complications is rib fracture. Cough-induced rib fracture has been reported in the literature, particularly in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.2
In this report, we present a case of spontaneous rib fracture improved with callus formation following acute severe cough during pregnancy. A 42-year-old female presented to our department with left posterolateral chest pain. The patient had experienced acute pneumonia with severe coughing attacks accompanied by chest pain in the eighth month of pregnancy. On physical evaluation, she had severe tenderness and a palpable hard callus over her left lower chest wall. There was no history of any thoracic trauma. A chest X-ray did not reveal any fracture, but chest computed tomography revealed spontaneous fracture of the left ninth and tenth ribs with callus formation (Figure 1, Figure 2).
The patient was followed with analgesic treatment, and no complications were observed during follow-up. In conclusion, cough-induced rib fractures are a rare complication during pregnancy. Repetitive mechanical stress due to high intrathoracic and intra-abdominal pressure during pregnancy may be a contributing risk factor.

Declarations

Animal and Human Rights Statement

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.

Informed Consent

Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and accompanying images.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Funding

None.

Scientific Responsibility Statement

The authors declare that they are responsible for the scientific content of the article, including the study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation, manuscript preparation, and approval of the final version of the manuscript.

References

  1. Yorgancıgil H. Kırık iyileşmesi. İnönü Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Dergisi. 2001;8(2):104-106.
    PubMed Google Scholar
  2. Yazkan R, Tomruk Ö, Beceren NG. Cough induced rib fracture: a very rare case. J Clin Anal Med. 2012;2.
    PubMed Google Scholar

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1. The left ninth rib fracture with callus

Figure 2

Figure 2. The left tenth rib fracture with callus

Additional Information

Publisher’s Note
Bayrakol MP remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional and institutional claims.

Rights and Permissions

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). To view a copy of the license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

View full license details →

About This Article

How to Cite This Article

Rasih Yazkan. Spontaneous rib fracture improved with callus following acute severe cough in pregnancy. Eu Clin Anal Med 2015;3(2):00. doi:10.4328/ECAM.54

Received:
May 8, 2015
Accepted:
May 23, 2015
Published Online:
May 24, 2015
Printed:
May 24, 2015