3. A 28-year-old woman is admitted to a local hospital emergency room complainin

Question

3. A 28-year-old woman is admitted to a local hospital emergency room complaining of sharp chest pains on her right side. The examining physician sees that the pain is especially acute when the woman tries to take a deep breath. Over the last 48 hours, the woman has had chills and muscular aches, as well as coughing. Moreover, she has just returned to the U.S. on a 16-hour flight from Rome, during which she was essentially immobile. The woman's medical history suggests that she has been very healthy all her life. She has never had children and the only medication she has been taking over the past 30 months is birth-control pills. The physician believes the woman probably has a viral infection contracted in Europe. However, there is also a concern that the combination of the birth-control pills and the lengthy PPD 557 2 plane ride may have resulted in a pulmonary embolism --a blood clot in the lung. The physician makes the following assessment:1 ?? If the patient has experienced an embolism, she should be given the appropriate medication and treatment. ?? If the patient just has a virus, she should be sent home to rest without any special medication. In this case, the physician assesses the likelihood of the pulmonary embolism to be about 50%. If the embolism has occurred, the appropriate treatment is an anticoagulant agent. This medication "thins" the blood so that the existing embolism is dissolved and the chances of further clotting are reduced. Without the medication, there is a 50% chance of an additional embolism developing. The chance of this occurring is only 15% with the medication. In addition, there is a slight (5%) risk that the use of an anticoagulant could cause hemorrhaging regardless of whether the patient has experienced an embolism or not. The physician has discussed this problem with the woman and has developed an evaluation for the potential outcomes, as shown below: Outcome Quality of Life Index No Problems 100 Hemorrhage 35 Another embolism 35 Hemorrhage + second embolism 0 Should the physician give the patient an anticoagulant? a. Formulate the decision tree that will help you answer this question. b. Using the Quality of Life Index developed with the woman, determine the optimum treatment strategy.

Explanation / Answer

probability of virus =0.5 probability of embolism =0.5 probability for second attact =0.5*0.15 =0.075 probability of heamorage =5% if she takes the tretment the probable index = 0.5(100)+0.075(35)+0.05*35 =54.35 if she declines =0.5(100)+0.5(35)=42.5 so according to the index calculation it is better to take the medication the optimum strategy is to take the medication cheers :)

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 3
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.