Both PCs and CTs were inserted under sterile conditions at bedside by the attending trauma surgeon or a surgical resident under direct supervision. Antibiotics were not routinely administered for placement of the drainage tub. Both PCs and CTs were inserted under sterile conditions at bedside by the attending trauma surgeon or a surgical resident under direct supervision. Antibiotics were not routinely administered for placement of the drainage tube. One percent lidocaine was given for local anesthetic along with an intravenous analgesic of choice for systemic analgesia.Patients were evaluated at Banner-University of Arizona Medical Center, a level I trauma center, from July 2015 through January 2018. Eligible patients included those ≥ 18 years of age who suffered traumatic HTX/HPTX requiring drainage. Chest trauma can result in the combination of both a HTX and PTX. Therefore, patients presenting with a combined. Patients were randomized using a block-of-four randomization method into 1 of the 2 treatment groups utilizing a sealed envelope method. At priori, we prepared 50 slips of paper; half written for 14Fr PCs (Cook Critical Care, Bloomington, Indiana, USA) and the other half for 28Fr–32Fr CTs (our institution does not stock any 36Fr–40Fr CTs). We then. Baseline characteristics were collected including age, gender, mechanism of injury (blunt versuspenetrating), number of rib fractures, presence of flail chest, Injury Severity Score (ISS), chest Abbreviated Injury Scale score (c-AIS) and number of days from the time of injury when the tube was inserted. Primary outcome measured was failure rates fo. To estimate the sample size, we used primary end-point failure rate to calculate the needed sample size. The existing literature, including our 2 prior studies comparing PCs to CTs for draining traumatic HTX/HPTX, estimated the failure rate for CTs to be 15–30% [3, 11, 12]. Previous observational and retrospective studies reported PC failure rates.