Critical Thinking ??? or not??

This is a fluid and electrolyte question. Your answer, inflammation, is correct and reflects critical thinking on your part. Let me carry the thinking a little further for you so you can see the link to nursing. In stasis situations, plain old venous obstruction due to sluggish, pooling blood is usually the culprit. This is one reason why we keep bed-ridden patients turned and moved as much as we can. This is also why it's not good to have a wheel chair patient left sitting for hours at a time with their legs bent at the knee, restricting blood flow to their lower legs and feet, dependent and immobile. These situations increase the hydrostatic pressure of fluid within the capillaries of the lower legs. Remaining in one position for a long period of time, particularly where the lower extremities are in a dependent, or a static position, results in increased hydrostatic pressure in those areas that results in edema. A thrombophlebitis, usually brought about by a blood clot that causes an inflammation of a blood vessel in the lower extremity, can result. Now, your inflammation scenario is complete. The patient's symptoms will be pain, redness, swelling and warmth in the affected leg--the cardinal signs of an inflammation. As protein molecules begin to escape into the interstitial spaces, the blood plasma loses its ability to pull water back out from the interstitial space. The proteins are now exerting enough oncotic pressure on the interstitial side of the capillary membrane to continue pulling more fluid into the interstitial spaces resulting in increasing edema. At this point, nursing interventions will be initiated. But, that is for you to learn in your nursing classes.

The role of plasma in the blood is important in exerting oncotic pressure that helps to regulate fluids passing between the blood and the interstitial spaces. When a situation in the physiology causes a severe decrease in circulating plasma protein, such as in some renal diseases, a type of global edema occurs throughout the entire body due to the inability of the circulating blood to hold onto fluids. So, in diseases like nephrotic syndrome there will be huge losses of protein through the urine resulting in decreased oncotic pressure in the circulating blood that results in sodium and water retention in the interstitial tissues manifested as a generalized body edema (dropsy).