Acute Care Nursing Using Case Study 1

Running head: ACUTE CARE NURSING
ACUTE CARE NURSING USING CASE STUDY 1
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

1ACUTE CARE NURSING
Answer 1
Congestive heart failure is a disease that is related to the weakening of the heart muscles,
leading to decreasing the power of the heart to pump blood to the entire body organs. This
condition primarily causes the blood to accumulate around the heart and prohibits it to pump
blood efficiently (Calvillo–King et al., 2013). The actual function of the heart and its four
chambers two ventricles and two atria is to collect oxygenated blood from lung (both ventricles)
and after the blood transportation, collect all the deoxygenated blood in the atria. However, in
this disease condition, the hearts ventricles are unable to transport blood to the entire body due to
its inability to pump blood and hence, the body stats accumulating blood in organs such as
kidney, liver, lungs, lower body, abdomen and nearby tissues (Roger, 2013). While talking about
the incidents related to congestive cardiac disease, it should be mentioned that currently there are
more than 22.5 million people in the entire world are affected with this disorder and maximum
number of affected people are observed in developing countries with lower socio-economic
status (Verbrugge et al., 2013).
There are several risk factors associated with congestive heart failure, within which, the
following three are most important. Coronary artery disease is one of the major risk factor that
enhances the plaque formation within the artery and decreases the flow of blood within the atrial
canal (Gheorghiade et al., 2013). Further due to this condition, the second risk factor associated
with congestive heart disorder emerges, which is heart muscle failure. As the heart is unable to
pump blood in enough amount within the body due to narrow oxygen concentrated blood, it
causes the heart muscle to put more stress to pump blood to the entire body and in the course the
blood pressure increases and the heart muscles becomes weaker (Verbrugge et al., 2013).

2ACUTE CARE NURSING
Furthermore, another risk factors associated with it includes, excessive consumption of alcohol,
presence of viral infection, irregular heartbeats and respiratory rates and increased blood sugar
are risk factors that leads to congestive heart failure (Roger, 2013).
This disorder impacts the patient and their family emotionally. The body of the patient
becomes scary due to the scar formation in the heart muscles and due to the accumulation of
blood around bodily organs, the patient looks swollen. This is the way the disease impacts the
patient (Packer et al., 2013). Further, emotional impact is also important as the patient and his or
her family develops depressive syndrome. In the given case study, Mrs. Sharon and her husband
both has the chances to develop depression as her husband takes care of her congestive heart
failure and he might not be that string to see scars and discomfort of his wife. Hence, these are
the way, congestive heart failure may impact the patient and her family (Gheorghiade et al.,
2013).
Answer 2
There are several signs and symptoms that are developed by the patient affected with
congestive heart failure, however, the five important signs and symptoms that help to identify the
disease are irregular heartbeat and pulse rate, swollen ankle, nausea, shortness of breath and
difficulty in using flat beds.
1. Irregular heart beat and pulse rate: as the heart becomes inefficient in pumping more
blood in the entire body, the heart rate become unstable and lost the rhythm to which it generally
beats. Further due to the less availability of blood in veins, and the inability of blood to reach
from veins to lungs, the pulse rate also affected and becomes irregular (Yancy et al., 2013).