The management of chest tubes is probably one of the most critical aspects in patient care in thoracic surgery and defines the required length of postoperative hospital stay in the majority of patients. So far, no generally accepted recommendations exist for postoperative chest tube management to streamline the postoperative stay. Instead, decision making in most thoracic surgery units is based on team preferences and individual training rather than scientific data. Therefore, digital pleural drainage systems represent a useful tool to standardize existing intradepartmental protocols for chest tube management. However, for the development of generally accepted protocol-recommendations, the diverging interdepartmental treatment protocols have to be analyzed and compared for superiority. In this IIT, the effect of different chest tube management protocols on chest tube duration is analyzed in four German Thoracic Surgery units.