[Stop in-hospital treatment with chest tube drainage as a first-line treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax].

In many Dutch hospitals, treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax (SP) routinely consists of in-hospital chest tube drainage. Alternatives, such as ambulatory Heimlich valves or manual aspiration of the pneumothorax, have become available in recent years. Neither treatment requires patient hospitalisation and pneumothorax recurrence rate is the same as after in-hospital treatment. A recent study demonstrated the same results for conservative treatment of SP (no intervention at all, outpatient-based) compared to chest tube drainage. In the future, treatment of SP should be outpatient-based as much as possible. As a rule, patients should only be hospitalised for prevention of recurrence using thoracoscopy and talc poudrage or video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. Chest tube drainage should no longer be the first choice for the treatment of patients with SP.