Case Study on a Patient with Chronic Back Pain and Drug Abuse

Running head: CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

CASE STUDY1
In the given case study, a 30-year-old female patient wants a Percocet prescription, which is a
painkiller. However, the health history of the patient shows drug abuse, chronic back pain,
osteomyelitis and tricuspid valve replacement. Based on the medical history the patient should be
prescribed medications for infective endocarditis (Burns, 2013). The continuous pain of patient
in her back and thighs requires urgent medication to cure and relieve her from such pain. The
patient’s persistent demand of Percocet made the situation vulnerable because Percocet is not the
appropriate medication for her treatment. The patient has been suffering such pain from the past
one year but has not done anything needful. This makes the patient more vulnerable to the
infective endocarditis. Endocarditis is a heart disease where the infection of endocardium takes
place, the patient has become more prone to endocarditis most probably because of her history of
drug abuse and tricuspid valve replacement and her current symptoms of pain in joints and
muscles and the feeling of dying (Colville, Sharma and Albouaini, 2016).
However, the chances of endocarditis is one hypothesis, the other hypothesis can be that the
patient is only suffering from acute pain because of her earlier chronic back pain. In order to
prescribe Percocet, there are several tests, which need to be done, as the medication cannot be
prescribed based on the patient’s desire. Percocet works well during the initial signs of pain
(Meinhofer, 2016), but the patient has been suffering such pain from the past one year, one of the
reasons why the patient should not be provided with Percocet. And also the patients feeling of
dying is another major reason for not prescribing Percocet because consumption of Percocet
might cause some mental changes. The patient was supervised to get a blood test done in order to
check the occurrence of Endocarditis (Wong, Karppinen and Samartzis, 2017). Then according
to the results of the medical report, appropriate medications should be given to the patient for
both her pain and treatment of endocarditis if diagnosed.