Abstract

Materials, mainly sponges, used in operations related to the treatment of chest and cardiovascular diseases may, even though rarely, be forgotten within the thoracic cavity. A fifty nine year-old male patient was admitted to the department of chest diseases with complaints of increasing thoracal pain, headache, and hypo/hypertensive attacks of three months’ duration The direct chest xray showed an increase in shadow density on the left paracardiac area. In the computerized thorax tomography, a mass 5x5 cm in size was established in the same area. For diagnostic and therapeutic puposes, a posterolateral thoracotomy was performed on the patient who had undergone a by-pass operation in another hospital one year previously. Observation during the surgery revealed a firm mass located on the aortic isthmus adhering to the visceral and mediastinal pleura, and to the aorta below. When the mass was separated from adjacent tissues by blunt and sharp dissections, pus drained out of the mass and a sponge appeared. The foreign body was extracted and the thorax closed.