Objective:To evaluate the effectiveness of pigtail catheter applying in single port video assistant thoracic surgery(VATS) for pulmonary tumor.Methods:A total of 441 patients undergoing single port VATS were obtained in this study. The patients were divided into chest-tube group and pigtail-catheter group. We used propensity score matching to match the patients 1∶1 and the clinical factors of the two groups were compared.Results:There were 143 patients in each group successfully matched by propensity score matching. The total drainage of 3 days after operation of pigtail-catheter group was significantly more than chest-tube group(375.49 ml vs. 285.03 ml, P<0.001). The pleural effusion on CT scan two weeks after surgery of pigtail-catheter group was significantly less than chest-tube group(131.77 ml vs. 178.84 ml, P=0.032). There was no significant difference between the two groups for the pain score, drainage days and inpatient days. Conclusion:Pigtail catheter can effectively improve the drainage of single port VATS, and there was no influence for the advantage of the surgery.