Reference no: EM133639523

Assignment:

C.P. is a 71-year-old married farmer with a past medical history of hernia surgery in 1986 and prostate surgery in 2005 for benign prostatic hyperplasia. C.P. has smoked for 40 years; for the past 3 years, he has smoked two to three packs per day. Two weeks ago, C.P. visited the local rural health clinic with complaints of a progressive cough and chest congestion. Despite a week of antibiotic therapy, C.P.'s condition continued to worsen; he experienced progressive dyspnea and productive cough, and he began to have night sweats. C.P. refused to be admitted to the hospital because "there's no one to look after the cows," but he agreed to go for a chest x-ray (CXR) study. The radiologist reads C.P.'s CXR film as "left hilar lung mass, probable lung cancer." C.P. is scheduled for a diagnostic fiberoptic bronchoscopy with endobronchial lung biopsy as an outpatient this morning to confirm the diagnosis.

1. What information does a fiberoptic bronchoscopy with endobronchial lung biopsy provide? Explain why it is performed and how specimens are collected.

2. As the nurse who works with the pulmonologist, it is your responsibility to prepare C.P. for the fiberoptic bronchoscopy procedure. What will you include in your teaching plan?

3. What is your responsibility during and immediately after the bronchoscopy?

4. C.P. tolerates the procedure well. He returns to the office 4 days later to learn the results of his test. The pulmonologist tells C.P. and his wife that he has poorly differentiated oat cell lung cancer and explains that it is a very fast-growing cancer with a poor prognosis. This kind of lung cancer is directly related to C.P.'s history of smoking. Discuss the nurses role at this time.

5. What do the terms well and poorly differentiated mean, and what is the significance of these findings?