Todays episode is geared towards medical students and junior residents as we discuss indications for chest tube placement, types of chest tubes, as well as a quick review of the 3 chamber chest tube collection system that can be daunting for new clinicians.

Joining me to discuss this topic is our current Brown surgical critical care fellow Dr Jennifer Hubbard, MD. Dr. Hubbard did her undergraduate work at Umass Amherst and then went on to medical school at Ross University before doing a general surgery residency at St Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury Connecticut. She is halfway through her surgical critical care fellowship here at Brown and we are excited to have her on the podcast today.

Podcast Chapters:

(1:29) Chest tube indications?

(2:42) Where to needle decompress?

(5:27) Difference between a standard chest tube and a pigtail catheter? 

(9:08) Technique for standard chest tube placement

(14:00) Technique for pigtail catheter placement

(15:30) Suction versus waterseal?

(20:50) Considerations when deciding on removing a chest tube

Links to Content Discussed on this episode:

Article on chest tube size and hemothorax: https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Fulltext/2021/11000/The_small__14_Fr__percutaneous_catheter__P_CAT_.6.aspx?casa_token=mwStOr036p0AAAAA:0_RiqETsgtR70oPpOAsXUO6D1TJGTlDyLQyR-j5NFWpmR-ScFah8Z0kelctpJrRNWTW0bRP1TQPJHb0MPUD31A

Behind the knife video on chest tube placement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5HuiD51Su0

One Pager on Chest tubes (and other important ICU concepts): https://onepagericu.com/chest-tubes

My email: [email protected] Please feel free to send me topics you would like me to discuss on this podcast