Traumatic Hemothorax

After sustaining severe trauma to the chest, patients will often bleed into the chest cavity (pleural space) which is called hemothorax or they may also experience air leakage within the chest cavity in combination with the bleeding (hemopneumothorax). These conditions are treated with the insertion of a tube into the chest called a chest tube (CT). Insertion of the CT is very painful for the patient due to the size or diameter of the tube. Alternative to CT is a small percutaneous catheter (PC), pigtail or non-pigtail. At Banner-University of Arizona Tucson Campus (B-UATC) investigator prefers inserting a small pigtail catheter for the management of hemothorax or hemopnuemothorax. The primary purpose of our study is to see if the use of the PC is just as effective as CT in terms of removing leaked blood and/or air from the chest cavity.