This project focuses on a complex and rare medical case: aortic dissection. When practicing triage, nurses have to interact both with frequent and ambiguous medical cases; those are often hidden behind very common symptoms such as chest or low back pain, and nurses must be able to analyse them based on their knowledge and competence.
With this work I decided to examine all the treatments that the patient undergoes once he gets to the hospital. I started by visiting Pubmed and Medline databases and researcing articles containing the following key words: aortic, dissection, nursing, treatment; I also read through textbooks on vascular disorders and triage, which I found at the medical library, and consulted some coursebooks on the care of the surgical and critical patient, on cardiovascular emergencies and assistance in ICU. The choice of the documents is based on the abstracts, on the year of publications from 2000 up to now, and on the clarity of arguments explained.
The project is divided in five chapters: the first one contains a preliminary description of the issue, followed by an explanation of the physiopathological process; the second one reports a specific medical case at Policlinico di Modena and analyses the five steps of the triage process commented by the nurse who the patient was assigned to and integrated with the informations taken from literature. The third chapter describes how to manage emergencies and diagnostic procedures; the fourth chapter discusses all the possible treatments and the nursing assistence needed and the last chapter observes the results of the several treatments and describes the therapeutic information that nurses must give to the patient once discharged.
