The case of the man with blood around his lungs

A few days ago this guy fell and hit his right side. He then came yesterday with shorness of breath and abdominal pain. He had a chest xray which showed a possible pleural effusion. He then underwent a thoracentesis (he has a history of cancer and he was on the medicine team) and they noted over 3 million red blood cells. So they consulted our team, the cardiothoracic service for management of the obvious hemothorax. We went ahead and placed a chest tube. In the process, about 1 Liter of blood came gushing out (and gushing would be the word here). We managed to place the chest tube despite all of the gushing blood. He tolerated that procedure well and remained hemodynamically stable. Hooray for chest tubes. And yes, his chest xray looked a lot better than it did before we placed the chest tube.