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Honeycomb sterna: an unusual case of a developmental abnormality in the sternum

Hirst, Cara Stella; White, S; Siek, T; Gasparik, A; (2020) Honeycomb sterna: an unusual case of a developmental abnormality in the sternum. Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy , 42 pp. 91-94. 10.1007/s00276-019-02350-4. Green open access

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Abstract

This report details an unusual case of a human sternal developmental abnormality of an anatomical specimen part of the skeletal collection curated by University College London, Anthropology Department skeletal collection. This rarely reported developmental abnormality is caused by the non-fusion of lateral ossification centres in the sternebrae, resulting in the mesosternum having a honeycomb-like appearance. Sternal defects are typically underreported in the clinical literature as many cases being asymptomatic that they are typically diagnosed incidentally, as such there is a dearth in our current understanding of the development and anatomical variants of the sternum. Although in recent years, large-scale CT studies have investigated the prevalence of sternal developmental abnormalities, these studies have not reported sternal defects similar to the individual presented in this report. While most sternal defects are clinically uneventful, the lack of awareness of these variants can result in misinterpretation of radiological and pathological findings as such an understanding of anatomical variants even when asymptomatic is vital.

Type: Article
Title: Honeycomb sterna: an unusual case of a developmental abnormality in the sternum
Location: Germany
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s00276-019-02350-4
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-019-02350-4
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Keywords: Sternum, Developmental abnormality, Variation, Unfused, Sternebrae, Accessory ossification centres
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10085409
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