Case Study Based Nursing Assignment

Running head: CASE STUDY BASED NURSING ASSIGNMENT
CASE STUDY BASED NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note

Running head: CASE STUDY BASED NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Answer 1: Concept Map
Figure 1: Concept Map of the given case study
Source: (Gosmanov, Gosmanova & Kitabchi, 2018)

Running head: CASE STUDY BASED NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Question 2: Essay:
Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a terminal disorder that affects people who have
diabetes. The condition that initiates the process of acidosis within an individual with
diabetes is when the body starts to break down the fats at a much higher rate. The liver is the
organ responsible for the ketone of fat into a compound known as ketones. Ogawa and
Sakaguchi (2016) opined that the ketone would make the blood acidic in nature, causing a
multitude of issues in the patients. The essay aims to highlight the case study of Carly’s, a 12
years old girl who was admitted to the emergency department. She was admitted to the
hospital because of drastic weight loss in a short period and there was a history of polydipsia,
polyuria and febrile illness for two weeks. In recent times, she has developed nausea,
abdominal pain, and vomiting tendency. Various signs and symptoms were indicating the
condition to be DKA. The explanation of the pathophysiology related to each of the signs and
symptoms, as well as the test conducted upon Carly, will be assessed in gaining in-depth
knowledge of the disorder as well as the neurological deficit found in the case study will be
reviewed.
One of the important factors that need to be understood in having an in-depth
knowledge of disease is pathophysiology. Pathophysiology is disordered physiological
processes that are associated with a particular injury or disorder. Thus, it is an abnormal state
of a specific disorder or functional changes occurring in the body due to a disorder or its
syndrome. According to Farsani et al. (2017), DKA is stated to be associated with insulin
deficiency and the elevated level of blood glucose that is thought to be over 300 mg/dL.
Because of the fact, the tissue within the body, including muscle, fat and the liver, cannot use
the glucose or take up for their activities. Even though the blood has an elevated amount of
glucose, however, the cells starve due to the absence of insulin in the body. This is because

1CASE STUDY BASED NURSING ASSIGNMENT
the brain-blood barrier does not require insulin for the diffusion of glucose across the blood
as a result of which the brain cells have an optimum level of glucose in them. Therefore, the
patient experienced several signs and symptoms that indicate hyperglycemia (Jia, Whaley-
Connell & Sowers, 2018). The blood glucose level of Carly indicated that she had diabetes
where the blood sugar level was extremely high as the normal range is 3.9 to 7.1 mmol/L.
From the study of Kocher et al. (2018), it can be stated that there are several complications
related to this condition, such as increase chance of cardiovascular diseases, damage to
kidney, nerve and even the blood vessel in the retina that can potentially cause blindness. In
case of a persistent period of such level of blood glucose level in the body that was observed
in this case study, it had led to a condition known as diabetic ketoacidosis where relative no
insulin is present in the body. In addition to this, another emergency complication that occurs
is the hyperglycaemic hyperosmolar rate where insulin is produced within the body; however,
the utilisation does not occur. The low concentration of sodium states that hypernatremia and
high level of potassium state hyperkalaemia, which are both severe in nature that can lead to
heart, a disorder in patients. The pathophysiological syndromes that are associated with the
elevated level of blood glucose in DKA are metabolic acidosis, electrolyte disturbance and
osmotic diuresis. Umpierrez (2019) opined that electrolyte disturbance involves an
abnormality in the concentration of the electrolytes in the human body. The ions are found to
play a vital role in the maintenance of homeostasis and help in the regulation of the
neurological and heart function, oxygen delivery, fluid balance, and acid-base balance in the
body. The function of the kidney is affected due to such imbalance and leads to inappropriate
urination (Jayashree, Williams & Iyer, 2019). An electrolyte test was conducted in order to
measure the sodium and potassium levels in the body, which is necessary for confirming the
disorder. From the test result, it was found that the sodium level in the serum was 128
mmol/L, and potassium level was 6.3 mmol/L. As per the information, the normal blood