Bloody Sputum

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Hi everybody, I'm a new grad so please don't crucify me when I ask this: my patient had a CT-guided placement of a chest tube for pleural effusion. About 8 hours after insertion she had a small amount of bloody sputum, multiple times. Is this normal?? Thanks for your help!

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No, solely from chest tube. But we need more Hx like why did she have chest tube, what did CT show, were they ruling out TB?

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Specializes in Emergency.

I actually do think this would be fairly normal. And not all of a sudden Tb. There are SO many things that cause Bloody sputum that are not Tb. I mean, they put a Chest tube in her, a procedure that can cause some bleeding. If it got into the lung and she coughed it up...voila, small amt of bloody sputum.

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I wouldn't worry unless it continued.

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