Successful Needle Aspiration of a Traumatic Pneumothorax: A Case Report and Literature Review

Traumatic pneumothorax (PTX) occurs in up to 50% of patients with severe polytrauma and chest injuries. Patients with a traumatic PTX with clinical signs of tension physiology and hemodynamic instability are typically treated with an urgent decompressive thoracostomy, tube thoracostomy, or needle decompression. There is recent evidence that non-breathless patients with a hemodynamically stable traumatic PTX can be managed conservatively through observation or a percutaneous pigtail catheter. We present here a 52-year-old woman who presented to the emergency department with a 55 mm traumatic PTX. Following aspiration of 1500 mL of air, a clinical improvement was immediately observed, allowing the patient to be discharged shortly thereafter. In hemodynamically stable patients with a post-traumatic PTX, without specific risk factors or oxygen desaturation, observation or simple needle aspiration can be a reasonable approach. Although the recent medical literature supports conservative management of small traumatic PTXs, guidelines are lacking for hemodynamically stable patients with a significantly large PTX. This case report documents our successful experience with needle aspiration in such a setting of large traumatic PTX. We aimed in this article to review the available literature on needle aspiration and conservative treatment of traumatic pneumothorax. A total of 12 studies were selected out of 190 articles on traumatic PTX where conservative treatment and chest tube decompression were compared. Our case report offers a novel contribution by illustrating the successful resolution of a sizable pneumothorax through needle aspiration, suggesting that even a large PTX in a hemodynamically stable patient, without other risk conditions, can be successfully treated conservatively with simple needle aspiration in order to avoid tube thoracostomy complications.