Digestive Disorders
1. What is anorexia?
● It is never a normal thing, it is pathological
● A lack of a desire to eat
2. What can cause
... [Show More] anorexia?
● Medications (chemotherapy medications)
● Gastric reflux disease
● Stress
● Anemic (fatigue)
● Heart disease
● Psychological
3. What is vomiting?
● The forceful emptying of the stomach and intestinal contents through the
mouth
● You are activating the trigger mechanism in your central nervous system
● In meningitis the meninges become irritated which irritates the brain stem
which is where the center for vomiting occurs and activates vomiting
● Anything that irritates intracranial pressure can trigger nausea and
vomiting
● Severe pain can trigger vomiting
● Gastritis also causes vomiting
● Always remember that anorexia, nausea, and vomiting are not
always caused by GI problems
4. What is retching?
● Non Productive vomiting - making the sound of vomiting
5. What is projectile vomiting?
● Projectile vomiting is when you vomit so forcefully that the vomit lands
several feet away from you. It is difficult to control.
6. What is the transit time?
● How long does it take for the food that you just swallowed to leave the
body
7. What is constipation?
● The transit time is prolonged
● You have to decide whether it is a constipation or no based on the patient,
there is no threshold on how often should a person defecate, always go
with the patient's pattern
8. What is primary constipation?
● It usually something that the patient has had for a very long time
9. What can cause secondary constipation?
● Diet (maybe they ate a steak)
● Medications
● Pesticides
● Hypothyroidism
● Aging (maybe cut back the red meat, use more fiber)
● Pregnant female taking iron pill
● Constipation is not going to harm the patient, the patient is not going to
die from it but may be uncomfortable
10.What is diarrhea (rhea means flow)?
● Loose, watery stools
● Can be acute or persistent
● If the patient has severe diarrhea, the patient can become dehydrated,
become hypovolemic, it will affect their cardiovascular function and can
lead to shock and death
● Hypovolemia: A condition in which the liquid portion of the blood (plasma)
is too low
11.What are the three types of diarrhea?
● Osmotic diarrhea (lactose intolerance)
● Secretory diarrhea (gastroenteritis, malabsorption)
● Motility diarrhea (drugs, hyperthyroidism)
12.What is the concept of osmotic diarrhea?
● The word osmo deals with water
● The person might be lactose intolerance and may have eaten cheese or
any other dairy product
● The concentration in the lumen of the small intestine increases, and
because it is highly concentrated, it is going to pull water from the blood
and put it into the lumen, which stretches the muscle and when you
stretch the muscle you push things out and it ends up being diarrhea
● Pasty, loose stools
13.What is secretory diarrhea?
● More of infectious agents
● Your epithelial cells in the lining of GI tract you have pumps which pump
the water out and pump back in
● Gram negative bacterias release a toxin, and the toxin binds with the
receptors and it actually causes to pump water in the other direction into
the lumen so it pulls water from the blood vessel into the cell and back
into the lumen so you end up with secretory diarrhea
● More watery stools
14.What is motility diarrhea?
● A process where a drug or a chemical binds to a receptor on the cell and it [Show Less]