AccScience Publishing / EJMO / Volume 1 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.14744/ejmo.2017.92486
CASE REPORT

Fusion of Ribs Mimicking Cavitary Lesion

Sercin Ozkok1 Halil Ibrahim Yakar2 Asiye Kanbay2 Erkan Ceylan2
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1 Department of Radiology, Istanbul Medeniyet University Goztepe Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
2 Department of Pulmonology, Istanbul Medeniyet University Goztepe Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
EJMO 2017, 1(2), 106–107; https://doi.org/10.14744/ejmo.2017.92486
Submitted: 7 June 2017 | Accepted: 10 August 2017 | Published: 26 August 2017
© 2017 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Fusion of the ribs is one of the most frequent anomalies in rib pathologies. Anomalies of the ribs may be isolated or a component of a congenital syndrome or metabolic disease. It is usually asymptomatic and detected incidentally on a plain chest radiography. Presently described is a case of a patient with a rib fusion mimicking a cavitary lesion observed on a plain chest radiography. Rib anomalies, including rib fusion, are often undiagnosed during radiological evaluation; however, they may lead to unnecessary diagnostic tests and treatments. Thus, rib fusion should be considered in the differential diagnosis of cavitary lesions.

Keywords
Cavitary lesion
computed tomography
fusion of rib
plain radiography
Conflict of interest
None declared.
References

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2. Etter LE. Osseous abnormalities in the thoracic cage seen in forty thousand consecutive chest photoroentgenograms. Am J Roentgenol Radium Ther 1944;51:359–63.

3. Guttentag AR, Salwen JK. Keep your eyes on the ribs: the spectrum of normal variants and diseases that involve the ribs. Radiographics 1999;19:1125–42. [CrossRef]

4. Doganay S, Kantarcı M. Fusion of the rib on plain chest radiography: a real or false image? Eurasian J Med 2009;41:140.

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Eurasian Journal of Medicine and Oncology, Electronic ISSN: 2587-196X Print ISSN: 2587-2400, Published by AccScience Publishing