It is usually reserved for very ill patients for whom thoracoscopy or thoracotomy would be too morbid. [1, 2] In its extreme form, open pleural drainage results in a thoracoplasty [3] by removing ribs from the chest wall, which brings the chest wall to the lung and achieves obliteration of an empty space. In the preantibiotic era, pleural infections were a challenging entity, with many complications and difficult management. At that time, open pleural drainage was an important treatment of chronic empyemas