Tag Archives: chest x-ray

Quiz: Is This A Good Chest Tube?

A blunt trauma activation patient presents with a pneumothorax seen on the initial chest x-ray, obtained in your trauma bay. You professionally insert a large chest tube, and all appears to go well. You shoot a followup chest x-ray and this is what you get:

What do you think of the tube position? Looks great, right?

But if you look carefully, you can see the lung outline in the middle of the right side of the chest. Big-time pneumothorax despite what looks like a perfectly placed tube. There are several possible explanations, and many of you sent me your guesses:

  • The tube is in the lung. This rarely happens to normal lungs. Sure, you can probably do it to an ARDS lung, but otherwise it’s not very likely.
  • The tube is in the fissure. This does happen on occasion, but not often. And many times it works anyway.
  • The tube is occluded or kinked. A PA or AP chest x-ray will show the kink, although bent tubes frequently work anyway. If a hemothorax is present, it is possible that a clot is plugging the tube. Clearing a plugged tube will be the subject of another post.
  • It’s not really a chest tube. Hopefully, this would have been detected when it was placed, but it isn’t always. The chest x-ray above looks great, right? Unfortunately, it’s a 2 dimensional representation of a 3-D object. Where is that tube in the z-axis?

In this case the correct answer is the last one. This is one time when I would actually recommend a lateral chest x-ray. Have a look at the result. You can clearly see the tube snaking around into the soft tissues of the back.

Bottom line: Remember that a perfect x-ray doesn’t necessarily mean a perfect tube. Go through the various possibilities quickly, and make it work.

Related posts:

Pop Quiz! Hint Hint!

Yesterday I hit you with a chest x-ray after chest tube insertion in a young man who presented with a pneumothorax. The lung was not yet expanded (chest x-ray taken less than 5 minutes after the procedure).

So what’s wrong? I had a lot of good guesses yesterday (@ResusReview, @uclamutt, and others in the comments to name a few), but nobody quite got it. Yes, the lung is not up yet. No, the tube is not in a fissure. The person inserting the tube worked up a sweat doing it, taking about 10 minutes to get it in. But some air came out initially, and the tube rotated freely on its axis.

Any ideas? Tweet or comment! Answer tomorrow.

Pop Quiz! What’s Wrong In This Picture?

Here’s another one to challenge your skills! A young male presents to your ED after minor chest trauma with pleuritic chest pain and slight shortness of breath. A chest x-ray is obtained which shows a large pneumothorax on the right. You insert a chest tube, and the procedure goes well.

Another x-ray taken immediately after insertion looks like this:

The lung is not yet fully expanded, but the patient already feels better. 

What is wrong in this picture? Tweet or leave comments. Hints tomorrow if I don’t receive the correct answer.

Don’t Get Lateral View Chest Xrays to Diagnose Pneumothorax

Pneumothorax is typically diagnosed radiographically. Significant pneumothoraces show up on chest xray, and even small ones can be demonstrated with CT.

Typically, a known pneumothorax is followed with serial chest xrays. If patient condition permits, these should be performed using the classic technique (upright, PA, tube 72" away). Unfortunately, physicians are used to ordering the chest xray as a bundle of both the PA and lateral views. 

The lateral chest xray adds absolutely no useful information. The shoulder structures are in the way, and they obstruct a clear view of the lung apices, which is where the money is for detecting a simple pneumothorax. The xray below is of a patient with a small apical pneumothorax. There is no evidence of it on this lateral view.

Bottom line: only order PA views (or AP views in patients who can’t stand up) to follow simple pneumothoraces. Don’t fall into the trap of automatically ordering the lateral view as well!

Lateral chest xray