Pharmacotherapeutics for advanced
practice HW
Pharmacotherapeutics for advanced practice HW
Maria is a 36-year-old who presents for Assessment of a cough. She
is normally a healthy young lady with no significant medical
history. She takes no medications and does not smoke. She
reports that she was in her usual state of good health until
approximately 3 weeks ago when she developed a “really bad
cold.” The cold is characterized by a profound, deep, mucusproducing cough. She denies any rhinorrhea or rhinitis—the
primary problem is the cough. She develops these coughing fits
that are prolonged, very deep, and productive of a lot of green
sputum. She hasn’t had any fever but does have a scratchy throat.
Maria has tried over-the-counter cough medicines but has not had
much relief. The cough keeps her awake at night and sometimes
gets so bad that she gags and dry heaves.
In the above scenario Maria most likely has acute bronchitis. Acute
Bronchitis is characterized by productive/or non-productive
cough, malaise, shortness of breath, and, wheezing (Singj & Zahn,
2019). With bronchitis it is common to experience paroxysmal
coughing especially at night (Huether & McCance, 2017). Acute
Bronchitis is usually caused by a viral infections the most common
being influenza, rhinovirus or something similar (Arcangelo,
Peterson, Wilbur, & Reinhold, 2017). Inflammation from an upper
airway infections can travel down to the bronchi leading to

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