A 55-year-old male patient was admitted to the emergency service with dyspnea, stabbing chest pain. The symptom had first appeared 3 days earlier. The patient’s medical history showed that he had undergone a fixation operation using K-wire and plate for treatment of the right sternoclavicular joint dislocation about 5 months prior(Fig. A, B). His vital signs were stable in physical examination. Chest radiograph showed a broken K-wire around sternoclavicular joint and a linear metallic foreign body in thorax (Fig. C). Chest computerized tomography revealed the metallic foreign body in the heart (Fig. D–F). There was no evidence of cardiac tamponade or segmental wall motion abnormality in preoperative transthoracic echocardiography. Removal of the wire was recommended and the patient underwent cardiac surgery under general anesthesia via median sternotomy without cardiopulmonary bypass. After pericardiotomy, there was about 50 ml old hematocele in pericardium. The broken K-wire was located between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, behind the right auricle (Fig. ). Because the wire had a linear shape, it was removed easily. There was an 8 millimeter diameter hematoma caused by K-wire in the anterior wall of the ascending aorta. After clearing the hematoma, the local bleeding tissue was sutured. There was no injury to the heart muscle. The pericardium was closed in standard fashion. There were not any cardiac conduction and rhythm disturbances intra-operatively. Then the K-wire retained around the sternoclavicular joint was removed. The entire intra-operative blood loss was about 100 ml. Follow-up chest radiograph was performed on the third postoperative day (Fig. G, H). The patient recovered without any complications and was discharged on the 7th postoperative day. In follow-up 1 year post-surgery, the patient had no particular symptoms such as cough, chest pain and irregular heartbeat.
A 51-year-old man reported with complaints of recent onset of left knee pain. He had sustained a displaced comminuted fracture of his left patella following a fall 15 months ago. Modified tension band wiring with cerclage wiring was successfully performed, and the patient was recovering well. He was well for the last 14 months and returned to his job without any pain or functional disability. However, he started experiencing deep-seated pain within the left knee with restriction of movements for the last 4 weeks. There was no recent history of any fall or trauma to the left knee. Clinical examination of the left knee revealed no patella or joint line tenderness but pieces of wires were palpable percutaneously. There was no effusion and the cruciate and collateral ligaments were intact; there was no neurovascular deficit. There was no extensor lag and knee extension power was normal. The range of motion of the knee was painfully restricted.\nRadiographs of the left knee revealed a united fracture patella with broken cerclage wire (). The inferio-medial segment of the broken cerclage wire was found to have migrated into the posterior compartment of the knee joint and hooked anteriorly at the base of anterior cruciate ligament.\nThe patient underwent surgery for removal of the patella wires. Fluoroscopic examination before surgery revealed the posterior part of wire had shifted its position with anterior part of it still hooked with anterior cruciate ligament. An arthroscopic examination of the knee was done through the standard anteromedial and anterolateral portal. Any structural damage including chondral lesion due to wire migration was not found, a migrated piece of wire was found embedded at the base of anterior cruciate ligament, going toward posterior compartment of knee through medial side of notch, which was removed (). We used intraoperative fluoroscopy (), before finishing the arthroscopic examination of knee, which demonstrated that, there was no remaining piece of wire in posterior compartment of knee. The rest of the broken wires were removed via a midline anterior knee incision along the old scar. The patella was stable after complete removal of the wires, indicating union of the rest of the fragments.\nThe patient was discharged the next morning and his wounds healed at 2 weeks. Complaints of knee pain resolved completely following the surgery, and the patient was able to resume work at 2 weeks.