NUR 600 Discussion 7.1 Common and Less-Common Diagnoses for the Breasts and Abdomen Common and Less Common Diagnoses of the Breasts

NUR 600 Discussion 7.1 Common and Less-Common Diagnoses for the Breasts and Abdomen

Common and Less Common Diagnoses of the Breasts

Breast and abdominal problems are among the health problems that nurses manage in their practice daily. These problems affect the quality of life, health and wellbeing of the populations. Nurses employ evidence-based strategies that optimize care outcomes such as quality, safety, and efficiency in their practice to manage these problems. Therefore, this paper examines a more common and less common diagnoses of the breasts and abdomen and how to differentiate them.

One of the most common breast problem is breast abscess. Breast abscess commonly affects lactating women. They are benign in nature. A non-lactating woman presenting with breast abscess should be evaluated for other causes such as carcinoma (Toomey & Le, 2022). A less common breast diagnosis are the complex fibroadenomas. Complex fibroadenomas have features such as cysts larger than 3 mm, sclerosing adenosis, epithelial calcifications, and papillary apocrine metaplasia. One can differentiate breast abscess and complex fibroadenoma based on clinical manifestations. Breast abscess have symptoms such as breast pain, tenderness, discharge, fever, warmth, and edema. Fibroadenomas have breast lumps that require additional diagnostic investigations such as mammography (Cardoso et al., 2020).

A common abdominal problem seen in the clinical setting is gastroenteritis. Patients with gastroenteritis present with symptoms such as watery diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, headache, and dehydration (Sunkara et al., 2019). A less common diagnosis of the abdomen is abdominal aneurysm. Abdominal aneurysm is an enlargement of the aorta, which is associated with increased risk for rupture. The differentiating symptoms include pain in the abdomen, chest, or lower back, pulsating feeling in the abdomen, and cold foot (Oikonomou et al., 2019). Therefore, the client’s presenting symptoms guide in differentiating between gastroenteritis and abdominal aneurysm.

In summary, this paper has examined the most and less common diagnoses of the breast and abdomen. Nurses should be able to undertake comprehensive physical examination to determine the actual cause of their client’s problems. Additional investigations may be needed to rule out other causes. The developed care plans should be patient-centered for enhanced outcomes.

References

Cardoso, A. B. A., Schröder, G. C., Zimermann, P., Almendra, T. S. L., & Pinto, A. S. B. (2020). Complex fibroadenoma: Bibliometric literature review and presentation of a clinical case. Mastology, 30, e20200052. https://doi.org/10.29289/25945394202020200052