Sample Case Study Of Aspiration Pneumonia

Aspiration pneumonia is caused by an abnormal entry of material, such as food, into the trachea and lungs from the mouth or stomach. The aspirated material initiates an inflammatory response, triggering a vascular reaction, causing an increase of blood flow and vessel permeability (Lewis et al., 2014). The patient in this particular situation choked on food, which caused some of the material to be inhaled into the airways, a process known as aspiration.
Information gathered from the patient’s history and clinical presentation provided evidence as to what led the patient to choke and develop aspiration pneumonia. Inhalation of foreign materials, in this case, food particles, occurs more often in patients with a lowered level of consciousness

I believe that all of the steps that were taken to treat this patient and all of the nursing interventions used to care for this patient were appropriate and effective. What could have been different, and better for this patient was if he had come to the emergency room immediately after he choked. The patient would have had a smaller window of time between the incident and treatment, which would have prevented the amount aspiration of food particles and microorganism cultivation that led to the development of his infection. I think that if the patient received the endoscopy to remove the food obstruction from his esophagus earlier, the patient would have been recovered and would not have contracted such a severe respiratory infection. With that said, this patient’s situation could have also been prevented entirely. As stated before, the patient had been under the influence of drugs at the time that he choked, decreasing his level of consciousness, causing his central nervous system and gag/cough reflex to be depressed. Thus, if this patient would not have been using drugs, he probably would have never choked, preventing aspirating and developing an infection