Introduction: Tube thoracostomy is an invasive procedure, which may result in life-threatening injury to major organs and blood vessels. We propose a new approach for inserting tube thoracostomies to improve the safety of this procedure, termed guided blunt dissection. In this article, we compared the safety of this new approach with traditional blunt dissection and two commercially available S...

OBJECTIVE To assess the complication rate of tube thoracostomy in trauma. To consider whether this rate is high enough to support a selective reduction in the indications for tube thoracostomy in trauma. METHODS A retrospective case series of all trauma patients who underwent tube thoracostomy during a 12 month period at a large UK teaching hospital with an accident and emergency (A&E) depart...

The cross-sectional study conducted at the Isra University Hospital, Hyderabad was to determine the frequencies of various indications and complications of tube thoracostomy performed by general surgeons between February 2003 and January 2006. The data was analyzed and compared with other local and international studies. One hundred and five tube thoracostomies were performed over the above men...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of antibiotics in reducing the infectious complications following closed tube thoracostomy for isolated chest trauma. DESIGN Double-blind, randomized clinical trial. SETTING Medical school affiliated large urban teaching hospital and trauma center. PATIENTS One hundred nineteen of 159 patients over 18 years old presenting to the emergency...

BACKGROUND Thoracostomy tube insertion is one of the common bedside procedures in emergency medicine and many acute specialties. Dislodgement of thoracostomy tube from the connection tube of chest drainage system is an important problem with potential complications such as contamination, infection and pneumothorax. Besides, mere loosening can also lead to malfunction. It is a common practice to...

BACKGROUND The role of drainage, intrapleural fibrinolytics, and/or surgery in the management of thoracic empyema is controversial. OBJECTIVES We aimed to investigate the operational practice of empyema management at our hospital. METHODS Between January 2001 and December 2008, all patients with thoracic empyema were retrieved. After exclusion of patients with malignant effusion, traumatic ...

We describe a patient with a recent chest tube insertion leading to atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular rate that led to multiple inappropriate internal cardiac defibrillator (ICD) shocks. This is the first reported case of this occurring in a patient with an ICD leading to inappropriate shocks. Our elderly patient with emphysema presented with a spontaneous pneumothorax and developed ra...

Background. The management and outcomes of occult hemopneumothorax in blunt trauma patients who required mechanical ventilation are not well studied. We aimed to study patients with occult hemopneumothorax on mechanical ventilation who could be carefully managed without tube thoracostomy. Methods. Chest trauma patients with occult hemopneumothorax who were on mechanical ventilation were prospec...