Published Sep 25, 2008
odooma
127 Posts
Hi everyone,
I am a pre-nursing student taking A & P at the moment and I desperately need help with my first case study. Any ideas would be welcome because I really don't know where to start.
Ann is a 4 year old girl taken to the emergency room. On arrival she was comatose, breathing with rapid shallow breaths, a rapid heart rate, an unhealthy yellowish skin color, showed signs of dehydration and very sick. It was reported that the child had a "cold" that lasted a long time and had been feverish and lethargic for days. Several tests were taken to determine her metabolic and consciousness stattus, several medical interventions were taken over a period of days and child had a MRI scan of her brain. Grandmother had reported giving the child repeatd doses of a cough syrup over days, ethylene glycol poisoning had bee suspected and MRI confirms the presence of this toxin in her brain. Earlier scan showed a swelling however later going from swelling to shrinking. The ultimate outcome of this case was that child lived but was discharged with definite brain damage, showing signs of mental confusion, memory loss and spasticity in her arms and legs.
Consider blood gases, lever and kidney functions test and consciousness test as well as medical interventions and improvement in her lab values as he is stablized.
Daytonite, BSN, RN
1 Article; 14,604 Posts
Please clarify. What help do you need?
How do I go about analyzing such a case. I have only been able to summarize the case and googled ethylene glycol poisoning but I figure that is not enough.
Any suggestions about how can go about it?
i'm not sure what you, as an a&p student need to do with this either. when doctors do a case study they present how the illness alters the normal anatomy and physiology and the manifestions (symptoms) that will be seen, how the disease/condition is diagnosed (tests performed), the treatments that are done and how evaluation is made to determine if those treatments are working or not. here are links to information about ethylene glycol poisoning, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, complications.
[*]http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mhmi/mmg96.html - medical management guidelines for ethylene glycol from the u.s. department of health and human services agency for toxic substances & disease registry
[*]
treatment - ingestion: respiratory support, correction of electrolyte imbalance (anion gap), consideration of correcting acidemia, ethanol (see treatment of methyl alcohol) or fomepizole 15 mg/kg iv (loading dose) followed by 10 mg/kg iv q 12 h; definitive treatment is hemodialysis. eye contact - flushing of eyes
[*]http://www.enh.org/healthresources/encyclopedia/encyclopedia.aspx?version=&documenthwid=ue5137spec - preventing poisoning in young children