Clinical Seminar for Pharmacology

School at USC is never boring. This week we are scheduled for our group Clinical Pharmacology Group Seminar presentations. The fearsome Sixsome is presenting first. The group includes Anya, Christy, Amy, Todd, myself and Amanda. Our Case Study involves a woman that has a few problems, well here it is:

A 45 year old woman had a known history of diabetes for 30 years. She is scheduled for emergency surgery for tuboobarian abscess. She is a current smoker with a 25 pack year history, is overweight (5’2″, 90 kg), hypertension and a history of irritable airway disease. Her current medications include Regular crystalline insulin at 35 Units/day SQ; Amlodipine and Albuterol inhaler as needed.

So what do we do with this woman? The main issues need to be addressed in our anesthetic work up and include:
1. Blood glucose of 250, how will we deal with this preoperatively?
2. We need to know the complications that are possible with her diabetes mellitus
3. What are the factors that need to be addressed preoperatively and how will we prepare this woman for anesthesia and surgery?
4. What is our anesthetic plan?
5. How would we treat intraoperative hyperglycemia?
6. How would we recognize and treat hypoglycemic shock intraoperatively if this should occur?
7. Finally, we need to describe a postoperative plan for surgery and a way to manage her diabetes following the surgery.

This sounds like a fun way to send an afternoon or two doesn’t it. Well this is just what our little group did. This evening I put together the power point presentation. It may be made available if there are any requests. Don’t go banging down the doors now.

So for anyone interested what has been going on around here that pretty much sums it all up. Clinical rotations start again on Wednesday and will run the rest of the week. Imagine we are essentially half way through this second semester of the Nurse Anesthesia Program at USC. Am I tired yet? Sometimes, but for the most part we all have been having a blast.