Cardiovascular Case Study
When attempting to effectively manage any patient’s cardiovascular disease process, it always benefits the patient if the provider takes into account co-morbidities. For CB, an 88 year-old female patient with a history significant for strokes, it is no different. Considering CB’s concurrent diagnoses, which include diabetes mellitus type 2 (DM2), hypertension (HTN), and hyperlipidemia (HLD), it seems fairly straightforward which factors should be considered—advanced age and renal function. This writing will endeavor to explore how both advanced age and renal function influence the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes, how they impact the current drug therapy, and how they may impact potential drug therapy changes.NURS 6521 Week 2 Cardiovascular Case Study
Influencing Factor
According to Munshi (2019), with advanced age, in terms of how it impacts drug therapies, a generalization can be made that the bodies systems will generally not be able to effectively process medications appropriately which can often lead to drug toxicities. Also, due to advancing age and decreased function of the body systems, polypharmacy is generally a concern and often leads to increased negative side effects. And when advanced age is coupled with decreased renal function, considering CB’s diagnosis of DM2 and HTN that generally leads to decreased renal function, drug therapy can be greatly affected. According to Collard, Brouwer, Peters, Vogt, and van den Born, (2018), patient’s with decreased renal function, have an inability to effectively filter out medication metabolites, and generally have a reduced creatinine clearance that can often limit the types and amounts of DM2 and HTN medication therapies. So, it would appear that certain medications will invariably be excluded for use in CB’s drug therapy regimen, or at the very least will require lower doses and increase frequency of monitoring of her renal function.