Review of Ascites (Nursing)

00:01 Hi! Welcome to our video series on liver cirrhosis complications.

00:06 In this portion of the video series, I'm going to talk to you about the five goals of inter professional treatment of a patient with ascites.

00:13 Hey, Healthcare is a team sport and I want to give you some tips and strategies on the most effective way to work with our other professional colleagues.

00:23 First let's do a quick review of what ascites is.

00:27 Now take a look at that picture.

00:28 You see the spinal cord in the back right, you see your spinal column, then you move over and see the liver, the stomach, the intestines and then there's that blue stuff, What is that? Well that represents ascites ascites.

00:44 Ascites is an excess or pathological accumulation of serous fluid in the abdominal or peritoneal cavity.

00:52 Now, you'll see this in approximately 50% of patients who have cirrhosis within 10 years of them being diagnosed.

01:00 There's three main causes of ascites we're not going to go into detail here.

01:04 We do in the rest of the video series, but it's increased lymph production, portal hypertension, and damage to those worker bee cells of the liver the hepatocytes.

01:16 Now there's five ways we treat ascites.

01:18 Hey, that's cool.

01:19 We hit that number 5 again, makes it easier for you to remember.

01:24 So first one is treat the underlying disease or disorder.

01:28 The second one is a dietary sodium restriction.

01:32 The third is diuretic therapy.

01:34 The fourth is therapeutic paracentesis and the fifth one is fluid restriction.

01:40 But only if the serum sodium is less than 120 or their symptomatic with their hyponatremia.

01:48 Okay I know I went through those pretty quickly, but that's because I just wanted to give you a framework of what we're now going to go back and talk about in more detail.