Physiology and anatomy problem-solving skills can be vital when you're the one taking a patient's history or doing the initial a
ssessment. if you remember the functions of different organs and their anatomical relationships, you can come up with hypotheses and ask the relevant questions to test them. you will also know what to be alert for when caring for the patient later. a fair, fat, forty-three-year-old woman had been having episodes of griping abdominal pain after fatty meals. one day she ate french onion soup with lots of cheese and suffered severe enough pain that she called in sick. her supervisor pointed out that she always gets sick after fatty foods. she went to the clinic and the nurse in triage took her vitals and history. the nurse noticed that the whites of her eyes were yellow and that she had tenderness on the right side of her abdomen. blood pressure and heart rate were normal. based on this initial assessment, what organs do you think might be involved in this woman's illness, and why?
There are two major symptoms that the woman is presenting: episodes of griping abdominal pain after fatty meals and her eyes becoming yellow. These symptoms are linked to high levels of bilirubin in blood, which involves affectations in two organs: gallbladder and liver. Bilirubin is processed in the liver and stored in the gallbladder, normally after a meal bilirubin is passed to the small intestine. However, if the bile conducts are blocked it can cause abdominal pain and jaudince (yellow eyes coloration). Therefore, the blood levels of bilirubin must be checked to corroborate the diagnosis of the patient.
