Tuesday, September 24, 2013

House Case #1

     Today in Biology we did our first house case. The patient was an 18 year old male who ran cross country at The Webb Schools. After running cross country he became very nauseous and dizzy and threw up. He then woke up at the hospital very confused. My initial hypotheses for what he had were 1) Diabetes, 2) Heat Exhaustion, and 3) Dehydration.
     During class Mr. Quick acted as the patient and each student got to ask two questions. Through these questions we discovered more about his symptoms and what they could have possibly stemmed from. We discovered:
1) He had vomited (water and lunch)
2) He had severe headaches
3) He had taken no medications
4) He did not have a history of headaches
5) He was extremely tired
6) He had memory loss and was confused
7) He had gotten 6 hours of sleep
8) He had no head trauma
9) The last meal he had was lunch (chicken and rice)
10) He sweated during his run
11) After practice he fainted
12) Drank 3 Gallons of water
     After this we were allowed to run certain tests on the patient and discovered only a few things unusual. It became clear that the patient had drunk too much water (3 gallons) and we diagnosed him with over-hydration.

No comments:

Post a Comment