Week 7: Behavioral, Neurologic, and Digestive Disorders
Discussion Part One
This week’s graded topics relate to the following Course Outcomes (COs).
1 Analyze pathophysiologic mechanisms associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
2 Differentiate the epidemiology, etiology, developmental considerations, pathogenesis, and clinical and laboratory manifestations of specific disease processes. (PO 1)
3 Examine the way in which homeostatic, adaptive, and compensatory physiological mechanisms can be supported and/or altered through specific therapeutic interventions. (PO 1, 7)
4 Distinguish risk factors associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
5 Describe outcomes of disruptive or alterations in specific physiologic processes. (PO 1)
6 Distinguish risk factors associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
7 Explore age-specific and developmental alterations in physiologic and disease states. (PO 1, 4)
You are at the local mall and you see a patient who appears to be homeless by his physical appearance and you witness the person “walk 50 feet to a table sit down, and after 5 seconds he gets up and walks to a tree and urinates on it” He repeats this action 5 times apparently oblivious to his surroundings. When the police come he ignores them as if they aren’t there. Later, you go to work and sitting in exam room 3 is the same person! Now, he is your patient, when you talk to him he has no recollection of his behavior by the mall.
• What is your differential diagnosis?
• What tests do you order?
• An MRI comes back and there seems to be a lesion in the temporal lobe does this change your differential? The EEG also comes back with unusual excitatory activity. What is your definitive diagnosis? In retrospect did anything bias your first differential?
Discussion Part Two
Your patient is a 77-year-old woman who has been more socially withdrawn lately and told her daughter she had not been feeling well. Her daughter has noticed a stepwise decline. While shopping for groceries with her daughter she became separated from daughter in the aisles. She became confused and angry when store employees and others tried to assist her. Her current medications are Hydrochlorothiazide, Lisinopril and Atorvastatin.
• What is your differential diagnosis based on the information you now have?
• What other questions would you like to ask her now? (Questions can be asked of patient first, and then of reliable historian separately.)
• How would you treat this patient and discuss why you give each medication or therapy you give.
Discussion Part Three
1 Analyze pathophysiologic mechanisms associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
2 Differentiate the epidemiology, etiology, developmental considerations, pathogenesis, and clinical and laboratory manifestations of specific disease processes. (PO 1)
3 Examine the way in which homeostatic, adaptive, and compensatory physiological mechanisms can be supported and/or altered through specific therapeutic interventions. (PO 1, 7)
4 Distinguish risk factors associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
5 Describe outcomes of disruptive or alterations in specific physiologic processes. (PO 1)
6 Distinguish risk factors associated with selected disease states. (PO 1)
7 Explore age-specific and developmental alterations in physiologic and disease states. (PO 1, 4)
A 19-year-old freshman in college has been brought to your office by campus security. The patient had been standing on top of the school chapel proclaiming that he was the prophet of God and that God was speaking to him. In fact he claimed to actually hear God’s voice. When he is in your office you notice that he is speaking very fast, can’t seem to sit still and his sentences at times don’t seem to make sense. He states, “I saw the professor sit on the ham sandwich and eat the raw calculus in his mind”
• What is your differential diagnosis, how does it fit how might it not fit?
• Based on the top of your differential what is the epidemiology of that disorder?
