Rib removal surgery techniques and methods depend on your surgeon's preferences, your anatomy, and whether the surgery is done for medical or cosmetic reasons.Â
The procedure will always be performed under general anesthesia, with an overnight hospital stay and an at-home recovery period of several weeks.Â
The bottom ribs (the 11th and 12th ribs), are commonly called the floating ribs because they don’t attach to the sternum (or breastbone) in the way that the first ribs do. When viewing an x-ray of your upper body, you can see that these bottom ribs don't attach to the front of the ribcage at all—only the back.Â
That makes it less risky to remove these bottom ribs than it would be to remove ribs higher up on the ribcage, so they can be safely removed by an experienced, board-certified surgeon.
According to NYU Health, a surgeon can make an incision above the clavicle or under the arm, cut and remove the ribs, and then close the incision with sutures or surgical glue.
When it’s done for body modification reasons and there’s a strong desire to avoid scarring, this cosmetic surgery involves making small incisions on both sides of the spine, cutting the rib where it attaches to the back of the ribcage, and carefully working the removed rib out through the incisions. This method comes with a greater risk of perforating the thorax and internal organs (like a lung), which is why so many plastic surgeons don't perform it.
