A couple of months into this year we had our third so called medical problem-solving education, the name sounds even less fancy when translated but it’s actually not too bad. Perhaps the only real downsides to it are that the rooms in which we do the final meeting are either way too cold or way [...]
A couple of months into this year we had our third so called medical problem-solving education, the name sounds even less fancy when translated but it’s actually not too bad. Perhaps the only real downsides to it are that the rooms in which we do the final meeting are either way too cold or way too hot and you have to turn in the assignments with 2 days or more in between, so you can’t just work on it at once but have to wait for the following information to be released.
In this third case we had to deal with an African man which had been living here for quite a while already, he was at an older age of 64 years and suddenly collapsed as he was running for the tram. Where as the paramedics in the case sent him off with the message that it was most likely a TIA and should drop by his GP we had to work out the case further and unravel the true cause of his collapse.
The picture up right probably already gave away the clue to this case, it was a heart condition. I hope they won’t be mad over at adam.com for using one of their images, but let’s say it’s for educational and personal usage, right?
Which exact heart condition eventually was the cause was brought up with the diagnostics we had to request, revealing a aortic valve stenosis on basis of calcification. We concluded that he most likely has had this for an extended period of time already, probably even since his youth, with the signs not showing up till on a higher age.
Looking at the case it was once again one in which eventually in my opinion you were still guided a lot towards the real diagnosis, with the way they build up the assignment there’s not much way of going around it and ending up with something completely different. Although it’s a great learning process to try and scrap the others from the list of what possibly could have caused the collapse simply by looking at the information you’re given.
As new information like usage of medicine or pre-existing diseases get added to the story as it the case is being unraveled some new possibilities will be added in your mind at time whilst others can be scrapped off, you’re really teaching yourself to focus down on a select group of possible causes.
Compared to the style which we have in our normal assignments where we pretty much work the other way around most of the times, given a diagnosis and then look at which problems it gives, these are a great way to stimulate us to really do the clinical thinking as they like to call it here.
In case of a collapse like this the kind of things which could be thought of include of course a heart condition and a TIA, but also an epileptic attack, low blood-sugar values, neurological cause, blood pressure issues and various others which all come with different symptoms and can greatly alter your final therapy making it of great importance to do the clinical thinking and come up with the correct diagnosis rather than simply sending somebody home with the idea of it not being too much to worry about.
