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The pleural drainage was described more than 2500 years, since the time of Hippocrates. Playfair, in 1872, was the first one to develop the system with water stamp in bottle, however closed. Our current system with an exit for air in the bottle was created by James Kenyon (1917) and Lilienthal, in 1922 spread out the use of the system on the postoperative of a thoracotomy with two chest tubes and since them, few studies has been made with just one single tube. The tube’s bore is other detail that we have to mention, which bore is ideal to restore the negative intra-pleural pressure and allow the full expansion of the lung? As we know, large bore chest and two tubes could be more painful and cause some restriction in deep breathing, sputum retention, and then atelectasis. The use of one chest tube after pulmonary resections has been reported in the literature, but far away to become a consensus or the majority in pulmonary resections. Objective: We have as objective to show the use of only one pleural drain (28 fr) on the postoperative of 369 patients in this non-randomized study. METHOD. The charters of 369 operated patients with only one pleural drain, between 2001 and 2005, had been analyzed. We evaluated the patients about the sex, age, diagnostic, type of operation, time of drainage, time of hospital stay and complications. RESULTS: The results had shown 62,8% male patients and 33,2% of female, the age varied from two months to 91 years, with median of 57,8 years, the average time of stay was 6,18 days, varying from 1 to 60 days. The average of the drain time was 4,8 days, varying from one to 36 days. The need to step in on chest tubes was less than 2%.CONCLUSION We conclude that the use of only one pleural drain - 28 Fr was enough and efficient for the postoperative in most of your patients. One drain did not differ in morbidity or mortality related in the two chest tubes literature.