Sternal Fracture Complicated by a Subcutaneous Abscess in a 5-Year-Old Boy and Diagnosed Using Point-of-Care Ultrasound

A Case of Pediatric Sternal Fracture Diagnosed by POCUS

“…Another case report showed a case of pediatric sternum fracture complicated by subcutaneous abscess. POCUS was performed by a pediatrician six days after the injury due to the swelling of the injury site 11 . Only one cases-series study reported POCUS performed by pediatric emergency physician in detecting sternal fractures missed by conventional imaging 12 .…”

“…A meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy for diagnosing thoracic bone fractures demonstrated that the sensitivity and specificity of US for diagnosing sternal and/or clavicle fractures were 77% (95% CI: 48-100%), and 100% (95% CI: 100-100%), although the patient population was adults and US was performed by radiologists in most of the studies 14 . In the pediatric population, no studies investigating diagnostic accuracy of POCUS for diagnosing sternal fracture have been published, but there are a few case reports showing the usefulness of POCUS for this condition 11 , 12 , 13 . A case-series study demonstrated that POCUS can detect sternal fracture despite a normal plain radiography 12 .…”

Two adolescents with chest pain after low‐energy mechanisms

“…1,2 A growing body of evidence shows pediatric sternal fractures arising from low-energy mechanisms of injury occur more often than generally recognized. 3,4 The standard anterior posterior chest radiograph obtained during trauma series imaging is often not sufficient to detect sternal fractures.…”