Teen Makes SA Medical History

Dimpho was born without a sternum. Now she’s recovering at home after a landmark surgery

- Lesego Seokwang & Kim Abrahams

The doctors couldn’t believe their eyes. The girl had arrived at the hospital looking like an ordinary teenager – but X-rays of her chest revealed something they hadn’t seen before.

Dimpho Dithebe was missing one of the most vital bones in the human body. Where her breastbone – or sternum – should have been was just an empty space.

It’s a bone most people are completely unaware of and yet it plays a crucial role, connecting the two sides of the rib cage and protecting major organs including the heart, lungs and stomach.

For 14 years Dimpho from Dithakong near Kuruman in the Northern Cape had lived an active life, going to school and playing with friends, blissfully unaware that she was missing a breastbone.

It was only in 2018, when she developed a cyst on her shoulder, that the problem was picked up.

Her sister, Tshepiso (25), took her to the clinic and they were referred to Robert Sobukwe Hospital in Kimberley where doctors made the astonishing discovery.

“When they were doing X-ray scans, they discovered that I didn’t have a sternum,” Dimpho (16) tells us.

The condition is known as congenital sternal agenesis, or sternal cleft syndrome, and is extremely rare.

While the cyst was easy to sort out, the absence of her breastbone was another matter entirely. Doctors at the hospital had never seen anything like it before but knew they needed to come up with a solution.

They told Dimpho that while she might not have experienced any difficulties without a breastbone in childhood this might change as she grew older.

“They told me that there was a possibility I’d develop asthma or have a heart attack,” she says.