What is the key question?

• Drainage of pleural effusion via intercostal catheter (ICC) is regularly used to diagnose and treat pleural effusion.
• Economic factors make faster turn-around of these procedures more of an issue and the possibility of applying continuous suction to ICC to safely expedite drainage has not been tested.

What is the bottom line?

• The authors compared drainage using vacuum bottles with kits using syringes. Pleural manometry was not performed.

Why read on?

• Drainage of effusion using low pressure manually applied via a syringe was better tolerated, safer and less often terminated early due to complications than when pre-prepared vacuum bottles which may generate much greater negative pressure.
• Use of vacuum drainage was faster by an average of three minutes over a volume of 1500mls compared to manually applied suction and was not considered clinically useful in this situation.