A clinically relevant porcine model of flail chest: Development and multimodal validation

Background

Flail chest has high mortality, but large-animal models with thoracic anatomy comparable to humans are lacking. The objective of this study was to develop a clinically relevant porcine flail chest model that preserves pleural, pulmonary, and neurovascular integrity, and to validate it using multimodal assessment including computed tomography (CT) imaging and physiologic parameters.