Gastrointestinal Health Care Concerns - Essay Example

"Gastrointestinal Health Care Concerns" is a perfect example of a paper on the gastrointestinal system. Gastrointestinal System is a crucial part of the human body. This explains why most complaints take place in the gastrointestinal system. The level of complexity of this system is high and it is highly influenced by factors such as digestive enzymes, microbial and microflora balance, or the lining integrity. The management practices that are currently being employed for gastrointestinal health care have brought about rising costs without any observable improvement in the quality of care. Gastrointestinal health problems continue to pose numerous challenges to practitioners in both the diagnostic and management areas. The complexity of challenges arises from the little amount of time that the doctors have with their patients in order to educate them regarding how the gastrointestinal system works and how they can take care of it. Abdominal pain continues to be one of the most common complaints advanced by patients to doctors. According to Dunphy & Winland-Brown (2011), approximately 90 percent of cases in the emergency rooms most commonly involve some complaints of abdominal pains.

Diagnosis and Management

There is a rising trend where practitioners prescribe drugs with the objective of healing the causes of ulcers. In one study, there was evidence that in Belgium, the prevalence of prescribing ulcer healing drugs was 20.6 percent. Another study presented evidence of general practitioners and hospital doctors inappropriately prescribing proton pump inhibitors. According to Deutschman (2010), acute gastrointestinal bleeding accounts for 5 to 10 percent mortality rate. Deutschman (2010) further estimated the incidence of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding to be approximately 100 per 100,000 people. However, the rate was found to have a substantial increase with age. These are some of the evidence-based diagnosis that has been conducted over time. In the past 14 years, the ideal treatment for nonvariceal bleeding has been endoscopic therapy (Deutschmann, 2010). Over 30 trials were done and it was proposed that several management practices can be done to reduce and/or prevent nonvariceal bleeding. These include injection therapy, laser treatment, and thermal contact devices. All these management practices help to reduce the rate of bleeding as well as reducing the mortality rate. This management practice is exclusive to the patients suffering from ulcers containing flat pigmented spots or adherent clots.

Barkun et al (2009) proposed a management scheme for nonvariceal bleeding including the evaluation and immediate resuscitation. The final step after resuscitation includes the placement of a nasogastric tube in order to enable diagnosis and prognosis. Barkun et al (2009) study concluded that the risk of nonvariceal bleeding can be reduced by somatostatin. They proposed somatostatin rather than a placebo, H2 blockers, or octreotide. There are other evidence-based management studies that have previously been conducted such as one of managing peptic ulcers. In 2005, a meta-analysis involved 1855 test subjects. The study proposed the use of high PPI dosage as the means of reducing and preventing rebleeding and mortality rates (Deutschmann, 2010).

Treatment history

The practitioner should consider visiting the patient’s gastrointestinal treatment history in order to determine the severity of the condition.

Evaluation

The practitioner should also conduct several evaluations including genital, rectal, and pelvic evaluations. These evaluations indicate the severity of the problem. Some of these evaluations may indicate even more serious conditions.

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