Cent Eur J Nurs Midw 2013, 4(3):614-621

Pain management in relation to the chest tube extraction

Andrea Pokorná^*, Zuzana Houzarová

Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno

Aim: To evaluate recommendations for pain management (by non-pharmacological intervention) in relation to the extraction of chest tube in the nursing care of patients with thoracic drainage.

Methods: Through systematic analysis, using Evidence Based Nursing (keywords using Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT) the total of 148 sources were found in primary search in the electronic databases available to the users of Masaryk University (SCOPUS, EBSCO, and MEDLINE - PubMed). After a critical analysis with the use of exclusion criteria, the total of 27 relevant studies on nursing care for people with thoracic drainage in general were subjected to analysis. Detailed two-phase analysis included seven relevant sources focused on pain management in patients with chest drains, and especially its extraction.

Results: On the basis of the critical analysis of relevant sources we cannot clearly recommend a unified strategy for pain management within non-pharmacological interventions in relation to the extraction of a chest tube. Using a multimodal analgesic approach is most frequently recommended.

Conclusion: There are recommendations for non-pharmacological pain affecting in relation to chest tube extraction, but we cannot generalize them with regard to the strength of evidence. One of the insufficiently proven practices is the use of physical therapy, especially the pre-emptive application of cold. The available recommendations cannot be considered as strong evidence, but we suggest their use in a clinical trial in conditions of clinical practice in the Czech Republic.

Keywords: chest tube, drainage system, nursing care, general nurse, Evidence Based Nursing

Published: September 30, 2013  Show citation