Pectus excavatum in mummies from ancient Egypt.

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.