Urinary Disorder Homework Help

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 5, 2007

i went back into an anatomy/medical terminology textbook that was used in a vocational program for medical assistants at a school i once taught at to make sure i was understanding the terminology "urinary disorder" correctly. this particular book, modern medical language by c. edward collins and juanita j. davies talks about the anatomy and physiology of the urinary system. we're talking here about the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra. the major disorders that it lists for this system are:

acute renal failure
chronic renal failure
glomerulonephritis
hydronephrosis
nephrolitiasis (kidney stones)
polycystic kidneys
pyelonephritis
cystitis

it seems to me that what your instructor is looking for you to do is to basically find the pathophysiology of some of these disorders and address the types of medications and special dietary precautions that need to be taken with each particular condition. i would put a lot of focus on chronic renal failure and acute renal failure.

just to give you a tickler on this, in chronic renal failure, only about 10% or less of the nephrons are functioning resulting in a build up of waste products and electrolytes normally excreted by the kidneys. administration of medications that are excreted through the renal system has to be monitored closely because they tend to build up in the person's system. so do fluids and the renal tubules failure to excrete fluid and these patient's are often on fluid restriction. in some forms of kidney disease, large amounts of proteins are lost through the urine as the nephrons are failing. with large losses of protein come anasarca (system-wide edema) and many years ago we used to put these patients on very high protein diets to replace to protein they were losing through their urine. you need to be aware that chronic renal failure is a long term progressive disease that takes many years to happen. it's onset is insidious and it usually isn't until about 75% of the kidney's nephrons are destroyed before the patient starts to show symptoms.

if your nursing textbook has a chapter on the urinary or renal system, you need to go through it and look at how the different diseases of the kidneys affect the medications they can be given and the kind of diet they need to be on. you will probably find in your reading that there are certain medications that can't be given for some of these conditions and certain foods that must be replaced or avoided. seems to me a nice little graphic chart on a index card with the diseases listed down one side and columns for special drug considerations and foods to be avoided or replaced would be what your instructor is probably looking for you to come up with. just the thoughts off the top of my head.

here are some weblinks that might help you out:

http://www.kidneyschool.org/splash/toc.shtml - kidney school
http://www.renalinfo.com/us/en/display/how-kidneys-work-and-fail -- what is kidney failure?
http://www.emedicine.com/med/nephrology.htm - these are continuing education articles for doctors. they will have information within them on the medications and diet recommended for the patients with the various diseases listed. more concise lists of medical treatments can be found on family practice notebook (http://www.fpnotebook.com/index.htm) but you will need to find the various diseases by using the search box at the top left of every page.

We'llSee · Jun 5, 2007

Thank you for your insight and wisdom, Daytonite, I really do appreciate it. I also thank you for the links you included.

For whatever reason, I just got hung up on how to include so much information in so little space and I was stymied.

Thanks again!