Beyond the Chest Wall: Examining the Relationship between Morphological Features and Psychosocial Distress in Pectus Excavatum Patients

The morphological features of length and depth of the deformity are correlated with psychosocial distress. Nonetheless, these individual features are weak predictors due to their moderate discriminative ability. This underscores that other patient-related factors, such as personality traits, neuropsychological conditions, and other psychosocial influences, are likely to play a role in the occurrence of psychosocial distress. Future studies should investigate these variables alongside the incorporation of standardized instruments for measuring psychosocial distress to better understand and address the distress in this population.