Chest tube placement

Welcome! I'm glad you're here to learn about chest tube placement. Before we dive into the anatomy and the procedure itself, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you so I can make this session as useful as possible.

To help me tailor things, could you tell me your current role in healthcare or your level of training (e.g., medical student, resident, nurse, or other)? Also, are you looking for a theoretical overview or practical, hands-on procedural guidance?

Medical student / resident (looking for practical, step-by-step guidance)

It's great to have you here! As a medical student or resident, mastering the chest tube placement—or —is one of those high-yield, hands-on procedures that you'll want to feel completely confident performing under pressure.

Your path

Procedure Steps

Management and Complications

What is a Tube Thoracostomy

Before we prep the patient, let's establish a clear baseline. A tube thoracostomy is the insertion of a sterile, hollow tube through the chest wall and into the . Your primary clinical goal here is simple: to evacuate abnormal collections of air or fluid, thereby restoring negative pressure so the lung can fully re-expand.

Show me a diagram of the pleural space

I would love to show you that! Seeing how this potential space actually behaves when things go wrong is the perfect way to visualize why your tube needs to go exactly where it does.

Anatomical cross-section of the human thorax comparing a healthy fully-expanded lung with a collapsed lung due to pneumothorax, including a microscopic detail circular inset of the tight pleural space.

As you can see, when air or blood enters this , the natural elastic recoil of the lung takes over, causing it to collapse. Our job with the chest tube is to clear out that intruding air or fluid to let the lung expand back to its normal state. Now that we have the "why" down, let's talk about the clinical scenarios that will have you grabbing a chest tube kit on your shifts. The primary indications are pneumothorax (air), hemothorax (blood), and pleural effusions (excess fluid, which can be transudative, exudative, or purulent like an empyema). If a patient presents with a massive, traumatic , for example, getting that tube in quickly is not just about expanding the lung—it's also about measuring the blood loss to see if they need to go straight to the operating room.