The optimal chest tube size for the relief of traumatic haemo/pneumothorax is not known. Traditionally, garden hoses up to 36 to 40 Fr in size have been recommended. The outer diameter of one of these tubes is up to 13mm… ouch!
A more recent observational study caused ATLS/EMST
to recommend tubes a bit small at 28-32 Fr. This is still something I don’t
think I would want hanging out of my chest.
Not based on any high-quality evidence, these
authors from Kobe, Japan decided that 20 Fr or an 8 Fr pigtail was good
enough. After some time, they decided to describe their results. Yes…
this was their methods.
Results?
Over 5 years, they put in 107 chest tubes.
About 90% were 20 Fr and the rest were pigtail catheters. The mean Injury
Severity Scale (ISS) was 17.8.
There were 8 (7.8%) tube related complications, and
none were due to tube obstruction. There were 4 retained haemothoraxes and 4
unresolved pneuomothoraxes.
The authors conclude that it might be reasonable to
safely manage chest trauma patients with small-bore chest tubes.
This retrospective observational study is of
low-quality evidence and should not change practice. But it
may provide some clinical equipoise to support a proper randomized trial. This
should definitively answer the research question.
After all these years, I’m quite surprised
a large RCT has not been conducted. It strikes me that it should be
feasible and ethical to perform. These are usually the major challenges in
conducting experimental trials. A review of clinicaltrials.gov shows only one
small study out of Egypt but it is not yet recruiting.
What are we waiting for? (There must be something
I’m missing…Bueller... Bueller ?)
Covering:
Maezawa T, Yanai M, Young Huh J, et al. Effectiveness and safety of small-bore tube thoracostomy (<20 Fr) for chest trauma patients: A retrospective observational study. Am J Emerg Med. 2020;38:2658-2660. [link to article]
Looks like I was missing something... A clever colleague of mine mentioned a 2012 RCT in China published in the Journal Of Zhejiang University that randomised patients to "2cm" chest tube vs. 16g CVC in the chest. Link is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251751/
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, some of the manuscript could have undergone a better peer review process.
BTW a 2cm chest tube is 60 Fr... I'm not sure if this is a typo...