Diabetes Care in the Elderly
Ms. X is an 86-year-old white obese female who presented to the ED with altered mental status and weakness last week. Ms. X has a history of hypertension, UTIs, and type two diabetes mellitus (DM). Ms. X lives next door to her daughter but otherwise is very independent and active. Upon arrival to the ED, her blood glucose level was in the 30’s. The ED physician ordered a D10 drip, and the patient was sent to the medical intensive care unit for monitoring. Before presenting to the ED, Ms. X was seen at her primary care provider’s office and was prescribed Bactrim for a probable UTI (no urine specimen was obtained) and continued to take her prescribed medications which included Glipizide. NURS 6521 wk 1 Diabetes Care in the Elderly
Pharmacokinetics is how a drug moves through the bodily systems, is processed, absorbed, and excreted. Pharmacokinetics also entails the study of the onset and duration of a drug in the body and enables the provider to find the therapeutic window, the targeted therapeutic response without toxic side effects (Arcangelo, Peterson, Wilbur, & Reinhold, 2017)