Case report. Isolated complete congenital sternal cleft in an adult: MDCT imaging findings.

Sternal cleft is a very rare midline defect. Incomplete forms are more common than complete ones. In this challenging anomaly, the underlying mediastinal structures (especially the heart and great vessels) can easily be injured by external trauma. In addition, the deformity is cosmetically unpleasant and quite alarming to the young patient and the patient's family. In this report, we describe the multidetector CT (MDCT) images that demonstrate the complete sternal cleft.