rib pain

[wave runner]

My daughter has been suffering from severe pain in her entire rib area on both sides, nobody seems to be able to come up with a treatment, diagnosis or plan for her.  Her rib cage will swell and she has severe pain.  We think she injured her ribs playing in a flag football game several years ago, they healed wrong or something.  

Please can you help?

[Quixotic1]

Has you daughter had any recent infections or bouts of coughing?  How long has the pain been going on?

Are the ribs themselves tender?  ?Find a picture of a real skeleton.  You can see that the ribs meet with each other at the bottom of the chest  in a sloping band downward from the front down to the side. When you press on those spots, does she especially hurt where each rib attaches via cartilage to the next one above it?

Is the swelling  mostly over these areas where the ribs meet each other?

Is she especially tender beside the breast bone (sternum) where the ribs attatch?

If most of the answers to the above are yes, then she likely has "Tzeitze's Syndrome "  which has swelling or acute "costochondritis"  an inflammation of the cartilage (chrondro)  where the ribs (costo) meet bone.  This can be excrutiatingly painful especially with sudden jerks of the chest like coughing and sneezing, or in trying to take a deep breath or in twisting the torso.

This should be verified by her doctor.  Treatment would be woith rest, ice, an antiinflammortory like ibuprofen.  Sometimes in sever cases steroid injections are helpful.  The conditio can follow trauma, such as bruises or fractures.  Would not necessarily mean the injury healed poorly.

I hope this helps.  Quix