Paper Example on Abdominal Pain

Introduction

Abdominal pain can be either acute or chronic. Abdominal pain represents a wide spectrum of the condition and this condition ranges from being to surgical emergencies. It is the duty of the doctors to understand the patient's likelihood of the disease, and his medical history before conducting a physical examination, requesting for a lab test or conducting imaging studies. Abdominal pain assessment follows four main procedures, inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation.

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Assessment

The doctor has to assess that location of the pain in the patient as the location would be effective in guiding further evaluation. If the pain was in the right lower quadrant, then the pain is as a result of appendicitis's, on the other hand, if the patient's history and physical examination present constipation and, abdominal distension then there patient can be diagnosed with a bowel obstruction (Velissaris et al., 2017). If the location of the pain is in the right upper quadrant, then ultrasonography and is advisable. Otherwise, the CT scan is advisable if the pain is in the righty and lower left pain. If the pain is a woman, then the patient may also be at risk for genitourinary diseases.

Palpation and Auscultation

The health care provider would touch the abdomen to determent or examine the size, as well as consistency and textures of the painful area. The location would tenderness of the organ affected cans help in diagnosing the causes of pain

Percussion

Percussion is an important step in the abdominal pain assessment. The caretaker places her two fingers over the affected area and knocks on the fingertips to hear the sound as it travels through the body tissue (Gustafsson et al., 2016). While the bowel sounds are hollow and empty, bowel mass produces thicker and duller sounds. If there are no bowel sounds in the quadrant, then there is a blockage.

Selected Differential Diagnosis

If the pain is in the right upper quadrant, then the pain is either suffering from biliary cholecystitis or cholelithiasis and cholangitis. It may also be colitis, or hepatic abscess or pulmonary pneumonia or nephrolithiasis and pyelonephritis (Velissaris et al., 2017)

If the pain is epigastria then it may be a case of cholelithiasis, myocardial infarction, esophagi is, or gastritis. The case may also signal pancreatitis, aortic dissection, and mesenteric ischemia.

If the pain is in the upper left quadrant, then the case can be diagnosed as cardiac (angina, myocardial infarction, and pericarditis), esophagitis renalyelonephritis or mesenteric ischemia.

Periumbilical pain can either be colonic or gastric. It may be as a result of early appendicitis, peptic ulcer, small-bowel mass or obstruction. Otherwise, the right lower quadrant pain may signal appendicitis, colitis, diverticulitis, IBD, IBS, ectopic pregnancy, fibroids or torsion, PID (Gustafsson et al., 2016).

Treatment

Treatment for Abdominal Distension

Abdominal distention may be as a result of gas or fluid in the abdomen. Medication can easily settle the gas in the intestines

Treatment for Obstructed Bowel

The obstructed bowel can be treated through surgical procedures. The areas causing the bowel obstruction can be removed. Any dead tissues in the bowel as a result of lack of blood flow can also be removed through surgical procedures. The stent may be an option for severely ill patients. A stent can be placed in the bowel to force the bowel to open up.

References

Gustafsson, C., McNicholas, A., Sonden, A., Torngren, S., Jarnbert-Pettersson, H., & Lindelius, A. (2016). The accuracy of Surgeon-Performed Ultrasound in Detecting Gallstones: A Validation Study. World Journal Of Surgery, 40(7), 1688-1694. doi: 10.1007/s00268-016-3468-3

Velissaris, D., Karanikolas, M., Pantzaris, N., Kipourgos, G., Bampalis, V., & Karanikola, K. etal. (2017). Acute Abdominal Pain Assessment in the Emergency Department: The Experience of a Greek University Hospital. Journal Of Clinical Medicine Research, 9(12), 987-993. doi: 10.14740/jocmr3206w

Bickley, L. S. (2013). Bate's guide to physical examination and history taking (11th). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.