Maria's Prolonged Cough: Analysis of Scenario 3 - Research Paper

Introduction

I chose to analyze Scenario 3 that involves the case of Maria, a 36-year-old lady. She is suffering from a cold that makes her cough consistently. The cough is deep, causing a sour throat and produce a lot of green spectrum. She records no history of vital medication and does not smoke. Her conditions began three weeks ago, which has now prolonged to prolonged coughs. She does not have a fever. The only medication she has been taking is over the counter drugs which have proven futile.

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Description of the Possible Respiratory Disorder

Maria is most likely to be suffering from pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infectious disease that is caused by bacteria, virus, and fungi (Caruana et al., 2015). Notably, the infection affects the wellbeing of the lungs, particularly, the air sacs. What happens is that it causes inflammation in the air sacs filling them with fluid, which, in turn, result in difficulty in breathing (Caruana et al., 2015). Importantly, this sickness is deadly if its symptoms are not addressed early enough.

Consequently, its severity varies depending on several factors concerning the patient's medical history, such as age and healthiness. Chiefly, Pneumonia is contagious as its molecules which are airborne can be transmitted from one person to another. However, the types of pneumonia that are fungal are transferable from person to person; instead, the infection is transmitted from the environment to an individual (Caruana et al., 2015).

Pathophysiology of Pneumonia

As mentioned above, pneumonia can either be fungal, bacterial, or viral.

Bacterial Pneumonia

They are the type of pneumonia that is caused by bacterial organisms. Notably, these kinds tend to be more severe than the rest and may also take time to be managed. The most common ones are Streptococcus pneumonia, Chlamydophila pneumonia, and Legionella pneumophila (Caruana et al., 2015). The symptoms of bacterial pneumonia include favor, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite and energy, and sweating and chills.

Fungal Pneumonia

They are the types that are caused by fungal organisms. Importantly, they originate from the environment species such as animals, birds, and plants. Consequently, people contract these fungal infections through inhalation. Again, it is essential to note that they primarily take advantage of victims with weaker immunity system (Caruana et al., 2015). The symptoms of fungal pneumonia include chest and throat discomfort.

Viral Pneumonia

These kinds are caused by a viral infection. The symptoms begin as mild and later proceed to severity if not treated as in the case of influenza infections (Caruana et al., 2015). They include running nose and coughing with the production spectrum.

Factors That Impact Pneumonia

Age

Notably, the seriousness of pneumonia varies with age groups. Small children and older people tend to at higher risk of contracting the illness. In most cases, individuals under this age group usually possess weak immune systems. Therefore, they experience severe symptoms since their body immune is incapable of eradicating the infection. Middle-aged people are said to at a safer pace concerning getting infected with pneumonia due to their robust immunity system.

PopulationPeople in overcrowded places tend to be at higher risk of contaminating pneumonia infections. It is challenging to discover persons with pneumonia infections in such situations to avoid them; thus, the patients end up.

Health Status

People with significant medical history face higher chances of getting sick due to their distort immunity after prolonged sickness. For instance, an HIV/AIDS patient whose white blood cells are defeated is more likely to suffer from pneumonia.

Reference

Caruana, R., Lou, Y., Gehrke, J., Koch, P., Sturm, M., & Elhadad, N. (2015, August). Intelligible models for healthcare: Predicting pneumonia risk and hospital 30-day readmission. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 1721-1730). ACM.