Physiology and anatomy problem-solving skills can be vital when you're the one taking a patient's history or doing the initial assessment. If you remember the functions of different organs and their anatomical relationships, you can come up with hypotheses and ask the relevant questions to test them. You will also know what to be alert for when caring for the patient later. A fair, fat, forty-three-year-old woman had been having episodes of griping abdominal pain after fatty meals. One day she ate French onion soup with lots of cheese and suffered severe enough pain that she called in sick. Her supervisor pointed out that she always gets sick after fatty foods. She went to the clinic and the nurse in triage took her vitals and history. The nurse noticed that the whites of her eyes were yellow and that she had tenderness on the right side of her abdomen. Blood pressure and heart rate were normal. Based on this initial assessment, what organs do you think might be involved in this woman's illness, and why?
Choose the two most likely organs involved in her illness
a. Liver, because of the yellow coloration in her eyes, which indicates that the liver is not processing bilirubin.
b. Spleen, because of the pain on the right side of her abdomen.
c. Gall bladder, because it stores bile and might be related to the bilirubin buildup in her blood.
d. Stomach, because the pain occurs after eating
e. Heart, because her heart rate has not increased in response to pain.
f. Kidneys, because they should be cleaning the wastes out of her blood-her yellow eyes indicate that waste is building up in her blood.
g. Pancreas, because of the elevated blood glucose.