Chest Pain Case Study For Chest Pain

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Chest Pain
History of present illness: The patient is a 71 year old male of the Veteran Association. His past medical history includes coronary artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The patient was involved in a contraindication at home where he was thrown into a dresser and hit his lower back. Shortly following the incident the police were contacted. During this time the patient consequently began to develop some substernal chest pain with a radiation to the left arm; the patient also became diaphoretic and somewhat out of breath. Emergency medical services (EMS) were contacted. EMS gave the patient aspirin and nitroglycerin and started a saline lock. EMS brought the patient to the emergency department. The patient had …show more content…

All of the other laboratory values were within the normal ranges. The recommended therapeutic range for oral anticoagulant therapy is 2.0-3.0, except for patients with mechanical heart valves and recurrent MI (2.5-3.5). So this patient needs to be put on an anticoagulant therapy since his INR is low at 1.1. As far as the BNP goes knowledge of each individual patient 's BNP range may be more useful that using similar cut-points for every patient. Marked elevation in BNP levels may be observed in states other than left ventricular congestive failure, including: acute coronary syndrome, right heart strain/failure, critical illness, renal failure as well as advanced age (P.R.I.D.E., 2004). Falsely low BNP in congestive heart failure patients may be observed with increasing body-mass index (P.R.I.D.E., …show more content…

The patient no longer had chest pains and it was determined he did not have an acute myocardial infarction at the time. He was released to do a follow up stress test for his heart and encouraged to maintain regular visits with his primary care physician. He was also educated on smoking cessation and diet and exercise. The patent stated "I am 71 years old and I do not plan on changing my habits now."
Conclusion: This patient did not end up having a myocardial infarction. He is at increased risk in the future since he has CAD, HTN, and smokes a pack of cigars a day. Nurses use pathophysiology to understand the progression of disease in order to identify the disease and implement treatment for their patients. Nurses use the information that they find to identify the next course of the disease so that they can provide their patient’s with the appropriate care they need. The medical procedures and medications that nurses administer to patients depend greatly on the nature of the

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