Child Observation Report

In the early morning hours, after opening up my office, the parents of Henry Ray, a six month old with a blood pressure of 70/50, a pulse of 110, and a weight of only 12 pounds. The parents tell me that their child is showing symptoms lethargy, poor feeding, dyspnea, tachypnea, some cyanosis, clubbing of fingertips, underweight and size, cough and congestion in lungs and excessive sweating. They also exclaime that he has a history of a ventricular septal defect, and an arrhythmia. I understand immdietly that I am going to have a very busy day. I tell the parents that I am going to run a few tests. The first is called an echocardiogram. This will send sounds waves that will show moving images of the beating heart. While I waited for the results on this test, I also decided to run an ECG or electrocardiogram. This will detect any abnormal rhythms of the heart by showing its electrical patterns. I checked the results of both and both showed very interesting results. The ECG showed that the heart had a strong arrhymia. The echocardiogram showed that the ventricular septal defect was worse that I expected. It also revieled that there was an increases resistance on the pulmonary arteries. This confirms that Henry has pulmonary hypertension. …show more content…
Their son is suffering from pulmonary hypertension. This is where the blood flow that leaves the right side of the heart has increased resistance. The blood vessels of the lungs have and increased amount of muscled in the walls. This makes the right ventricle work harder to pump blood to the lungs. Their sons ventricular septal defect is worsening the affects of the pulmonary hypertension. Ventricular septal defect is where there is a small opening in the septum of the heart. This means that unoxygenated blood and oxygenated is mixing in the heart. This causes the heart to work harder to pump blood to the lungs. This is caused from birth and cannot be