If a character were to be stabbed hard enough in the chest that a lung was punctured and a few ribs broken, would they be able to recover from home with the help of a trained nurse, or would they absolutely need to go into surgery at the hospital?
They don’t need surgery-surgery, but they’ll definitely need the ER, and they’re likely to get admitted to the hospital.
Your character needs a procedure called a chest tube, which will help drain the blood and air from around the lung and allow it to fully inflate.
ER docs are aces at bedside chest tubes, which your character will need. (Okay, so technically it’s a surgical procedure, but it’s not an OR thing.)
What the ER docs will do is they’ll cut a hole in the side of the chest (technical landmark is the 5th intercostal space, or the place between the 5th and 6th ribs, at the anterior axillary line, or in line with the front of the shoulder on the character’s side). They’ll cut a small hole and slip a tube into the space. (It might be a smaller “pigtail catheter,” or it might be an actual formal chest tube.)
That tube is going to need to drain into something. If it’s a pigtail, often it will just drain into a bag, but a chest tube is normally hooked up to a negative-pressure drain known by the trade name Pleur-Evac. (It’s basically a plastic box with some water in it that puts negative or “sucking” pressure on the tube by being attached to suction on the wall.)
As for broken ribs, they probably won’t need surgery, but it’s possible if the bone ends threaten the lung.
The character will need at least a 3-day admission while the tube drains. They may get a little bit of oxygen, but they might not. They’ll get pain medicine, which is always nice.
But this isn’t a care-for-this-at-home injury. Sorry nonny.
Hope this helped!
xoxo, Aunt Scripty
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