Primary bone cancers, also called bone sarcomas, can arise anywhere in the body. Less than 1% of cancers are identified as primary bone cancers annually, and they are correlated with high rates of morbidity and death. Twenty to twenty-seven percent of primary malignant osseous neoplasms are chondrosarcomas, the rarest subtype of bone sarcomas. The incidence of chondrosarcomas in Saudi Arabia was less common than globally discovered chondrosarcomas, and only a few cases have been recorded. The most common presentation of the primary chondrosarcoma (CS) is to encompass the bony skeleton of the long bones of the lower extremities and the axial skeleton. Detecting primary CS in the anterior chest wall and the rib cage is rare. To our knowledge, chondrosarcomas of the ribs encroaching on the anterior chest are rare and have never been documented in Saudi Arabian or Middle East medical or surgical literature. We describe a case of a 32-year-old female with chondrosarcoma of the left anterior seventh rib, with no other medical or surgical histories. Further work-up at the tertiary care center, including computed tomography-scan, magnetic resonance imaging, and detailed triple bone scan (nuclear scan) imaging and histological biopsy, revealed features of chondrosarcoma arising from the ribs and involving the surrounding soft tissue. The patient underwent en masse surgical resection with a 4 cm margin, including the sixth rib and partial resection of the left hemidiaphragm and a small piece of the diaphragm. The patient was discharged without any inauspicious consequences. In the current work, we comprehensively discussed a scarce case of the anterior chest wall chondrosarcoma affecting the rib. This case highlights the importance of early detection of a rare tumor using a toolkit diagnostic approach to provide successful management and caring of the patient. Consequently, this will guarantee encouraging outcomes and thus stress the fruitful role of the surgery as the best curative modality in chondrosarcoma patients.
Surgical coronary bypass has evolved continually, and most analyses currently favor performing coronary grafts with autologous living arterial conduits to obtain better long-term patencies and clinical outcomes. With bilateral internal mammary artery grafts and both radial arteries, 4 excellent arterial conduits exist for creating "all-arterial" revascularization in the majority of multivessel disease patients, including those with valve disorders. Using contemporary surgical techniques, it is possible to obtain greater than 95% overall early graft patencies that translate into better late outcomes, including improved survival, freedom from myocardial infarction, fewer percutaneous coronary interventions, and redo coronary bypass procedures. The overall goal is to revascularize the 2 most important coronary systems with internal mammary artery grafts, and the rest with radial arteries, depending on the anatomy, experience, and choice of the surgeon. Using highly validated management strategies, early postoperative complications, including the incidence of sternal infections, are extremely uncommon, and in many practices, multi-arterial grafts currently are used in the majority of multivessel patients, including those with concomitant valve disease. Because patencies and outcomes are significantly better than with saphenous vein bypass or percutaneous coronary interventions, referring physicians frequently favor multi-arterial bypass procedures as the primary therapy for patients with prognostically serious multivessel disease. Thus, coronary bypass using predominantly autologous arterial conduits should play an increasingly important role in the future management of severe coronary atherosclerosis.
Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) remains one of the most commonly performed operations worldwide. However, most CABG operations performed today are as invasive -apart from saphenous vein harvesting- as they were 50 years ago. While heart valve operations have become less invasive, CABG faces formidable challenges in doing so. Valve surgery requires a single surgical exposure to the valve intervened on, but less invasive CABG necessitates multiple surgical exposures to harvest internal thoracic artery conduits, source their inflow plus that of other grafts, and expose each coronary target to be grafted -including anterior, lateral, posterior, and inferior vessels. In this article, we rationalize why we believe that conventional CABG remains unduly invasive, associated with morbidity and prolonged recovery, and why less invasive CABG in its many forms, which we describe, represents a safe, practical, diffusible, and less invasive alternative to sternotomy CABG. Centers of excellence in coronary artery surgery should dedicate resources and expertise to developing high-quality, safe, durable, and advanced forms of lesser invasive CABG.