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After open heart surgery, should there be a piece of bone missing from the rib cage?

Ten years ago my son had open heart surgery. All went well until this year when we needed to do a chest xray do to constant chest colds. When the results came back that he was healthy we where elated...but, the doctor had a concerned and asked if we knew there was a piece of bone missing from the front of his ribcage by the sternum...Both my husband and myself where puzzled...we got a hold of the xray and it looks like a chunk is cut right out... Is this normal? The doctors never told us of this.... Ten years ago my son had open heart surgery. All went well until this year when we needed to do a chest xray do to constant chest colds. When the results came back that he was healthy we where elated...but, the doctor had a concerned and asked if we knew there was a piece of bone missing from the front of his ribcage by the sternum...Both my husband and myself where puzzled...we got a hold of the xray and it looks like a chunk is cut right out... Is this normal? The doctors never told us of this.... The type of heart condition is subaeortic stenosis...

Public Comments

1. I want to start by saying that although I am a doctor, I am not a surgeon, never mind a cardiothoracic surgeon, so I'm going to have to be general here, since I'm not an expert in the relevant field. As far as I know it is not typical for CT surgeons to carve out pieces of the rib cage during cardiac surgery - they do have to saw the ribcage in half (they usually do this through the middle of the sternum) and then wire it back together, but they usually don't have to take anything out. Now, having said that, I have no idea what happened during your son's surgery (I don't even know what sort of surgery it was) and it is certainly possible that something happened where they had a reason to do so. They might not have mentioned it to you because they didn't feel it was significant (in the same way they're not going to tell you which tools they used or how much suture or any of the many, many details of the operation which are probably largely irrelevant to anyone who wasn't actually doing it) and it certainly doesn't sound like it's causing him any problems. It doesn't sound like anything to worry about really....
2. Rib resection is sometimes done during cardiac surgery if the space for work up is less and retraction alone is not enough to give sufficient work space.