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Pectus excavatum in mummies from ancient Egypt
1Department of Microbiology, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA jakub-kwiecinski@uiowa.edu jkwiecinski@gmail.com.
Abstract:
Pectus excavatum is one of the common congenital anomalies, yet there seems to be a suspicious absence of any cases or descriptions of this deformity from antiquity. This could represent a real change in disease prevalence but is more likely just due to an inadequate reporting in medico-historical literature. The current study reviews reports of computed tomography (CT) scans of 217 ancient Egyptian mummies, revealing 3 presumed cases of this deformity. Therefore, pectus excavatum was in fact present already in ancient times, with prevalence roughly similar to the modern one.
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