Percutaneous pigtail catheter versus chest tube for the treatment of pediatric traumatic hemothorax: An Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma multicenter study

A pediatric trauma patient comes in with hemothorax needing drainage. What tube are you going to use, a chest tube or a pigtail catheter? I'm Jill Westaker, an MD, and this is an article you should know about. Earlier this year, Goodman et al. published an article in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery investigating over 500 pediatric trauma patients with hemothorax who were treated with either a pigtail catheter or a chest tube. So what did these authors find? First of all, most patients were treated with a chest tube. Only about 13% were treated with a pigtail. On this though, they didn't find much difference between each group. There was no difference in injury severity score or age between the groups. Length of stay and ICU length of stay also were similar, and importantly, they found no significant difference between tube failure rates or complications between both groups. So what is this article telling us? Overall, pigtail catheters are similarly safe and effective compared to chest tubes. So now that we've reviewed this article, what tube are you going to use?