PAIN ASSESSMENT, OBESITY AND SMOKING

Explaining pain sensation and pain assessment framework:

Pain is the unpleasant sensation that is caused due to the tissue damage in the body (Fillingim et al. 2016.). When a person gets injured the stimulus of pain has been carried by the receptor of the cells in the wound sites through which the impulse then transferred to the neuron and then is carried to brain. The brain then signals the appropriate organ to take necessary action to feel the sensation and heal the area through development of antibodies.

Pain assessment is the process through which the intensity of the pain is assessed and measured thereby developing effective ways to reduce and manage the pain. PQRST is the useful pain assessment framework that is widely used by modern health professionals. The framework is as follows:

Palliation

In this stage, health professionals analyse the reason behind the pain and injuries. Here nurses analyse that how the patients got injured, what was the event and what medicines he or she has taken.

Quality:

In this stage nurses ask about the feeling of the pain to the patients such as dull, crushing, burning, throbbing and nauseating

Region

Here nurses determine that wound parts of the body of patient in which the injury occurred

Severity scale:

Here nurses and doctors assess the intensity and severity of the pain.

Timing

Here the time when the patients get injured is recorded.

Pathophysiology of impact of smoking:

Smoking leads to severe damage in the cardio vascular system. Through smoking nicotine enters into to body which causes the tightening of the blood vessels thereby restricting the blood flow through the blood vessels (Grossmann et al. 2020.). In addition to this, through smoking different harmful substances enter into the body which cause different health condition such as destruction of the lung alveoli’s (emphysema), chronic bronchitis, asthma COPD and lung cancer. Nicotine along with the harmful substances enters in to the blood vessels causing the mucous secretion from lining of mucosa cells in the inner wall blood vessels which then causes the tightening of the blood vessels thereby reducing the supply of blood to the lung as well as to different body parts. On the other hand, through destruction of air sacs in the lung alveoli there is sharp reduction in the blood oxygenation which leads to less oxygen is carried by the blood into the alveoli thereby supplying less oxygen to the cells. This causes the severe breathing difficulties in people with COPD and asthma. On the other hand, due to poor blood circulation through the blood vessel heart needs to pump more blood into the circulation to normalize the situation which pose extra pressure on the heart thereby leading to the high risk of heart stroke.

Obesity

Obesity is the health condition in which additional fat gets stored into muscles and tissues thereby increasing overall Body Mass Index [BMI] (Brown et al. 2019.). Body mass index [BMI] is the measure that is gained through dividing the body weight by the square person’s height (kg/m2]. If a person has a BMI above 25 kl/m2 but less than 30kg/m2 then the person is considered as the overweight. On the other hand, if the BMI is more than 30kg/,2, then the person is considers as obese.

Here the selection of this topic is highly relevant as the obesity becomes a matter of great concern in current health care field. Evidence showed that there are 6 in each 10 women and 7 in each 10 men are diagnosed with overweight. On the other hand, 1 in each 4 men and 1 in each 4 women suffers from obesity.

Obesity impacts adversely on health and wellbeing of people with development of different chronic illness such as heart stoke, cardio vascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. Additionally, obesity is associated with developing the chances of renal failure and heart stoke in people. If person is diagnosed with obesity then excess fat gets stored into the muscles and tissues which need oxygen and nutrients more than the normal rates to metabolize the excess fat. In this purpose the blood vessels need to supply the extra blood into muscles tissues which can only be possible if heart pumps more blood toward the body cells. Therefore, in case of obese people, heart faces extra loads of supping more blood into the circulation which enhances the risk of heart stroke.

On the other hand, in obese people, the fat is accumulated in the inner wall of the arteries and veins thereby causing the passage for blood flow narrower than the normal case. Therefore, extra pressure is posed in the blood circulation through the narrow arteries and veins which leads to reduction of blood supply to the different body parts. The low circulation of blood through blood vessels supplies lower amount of blood to lung alveoli which then reduces the level of blood oxygenation, therefore overall oxygen supply to the body cells is reduced which causes hypoxia. Reduced ability of body to transport oxygen poses excess pressure on heart for supplying more blood into circulation which leads to tachycardia.

Obesity is associated with sleep apnea and breathing issues. Due to excess fat accumulation the wall of chest and lung is quizzed which lead to poor oxygenation into blood thereby causing the breathing difficulties. Due to breathing difficulties in people with obesity they suffer from sleep apnea and sleep interruption. On the other hand, obesity also poses adverse impact on the normal function of insulin thereby enhancing the blood glucose level and causing diabetes type 2 in people.

Reference list:

Brown, T., Moore, T.H., Hooper, L., Gao, Y., Zayegh, A., Ijaz, S., Elwenspoek, M., Foxen, S.C., Magee, L., O'Malley, C. and Waters, E., 2019. Interventions for preventing obesity in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7).

Fillingim, R.B., Loeser, J.D., Baron, R. and Edwards, R.R., 2016. Assessment of chronic pain: Domains, methods, and mechanisms. The Journal of Pain, 17(9), pp.T10-T20.

Grossmann, T., Steffan, B., Kirsch, A., Grill, M., Gerstenberger, C. and Gugatschka, M., 2020. Exploring the Pathophysiology of Reinke's Edema: The Cellular Impact of Cigarette Smoke and Vibration. The Laryngoscope.

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