A surgical procedure in which the lung is attached to the rib cage or chest wall to treat conditions like tuberculosis or lung collapse.
From Latin 'costa' (rib) combined with Greek 'pneuma' (air, lung) and 'pexis' (fixation). This is a historical surgical term from the pre-antibiotic era when surgeons had to be creative about healing damaged lungs by stabilizing them against the rib cage.
Costopneumopexy was a dramatic surgery performed on tuberculosis patients before antibiotics existed—surgeons would literally glue or stitch the lung to the rib cage to keep it immobilized while it healed, a brutal intervention that shows how desperate doctors were before we had drugs.
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