Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that causes the patients to be more obsessed about weight gain, consequently affecting what they eat. Individuals with the eating disorder are often afraid of gaining weight because they are always sensitive about how they look. The signs and symptoms of anorexia nervosa present as both physical and emotional. Regarding the physical symptoms, an individual with the disorder will display signs such as abnormal blood count, thin appearance, fatigue, bluish discoloration of the fingers, dry yellow skin, and intolerance of cold (Eddy et al., 2017). The other physical symptoms of the condition may include the absence of menstruation for the female, dehydration, and extreme loss of weight (Eddy et al., 2017). The emotional signs of the condition involve frequent skipping of meals, preoccupation with food and cooking elaborate meals for others, the fear of eating food in public, restricting the diet to certain ‘safe foods’, and adopting a rigid meal ritual. The patients often try to throw up shortly after eating in case they feel that they have eaten a lot of food.
The treatment options available for anorexia nervosa include medical care and psychotherapy. Regarding medical care, it is important for physicians to monitor the patient’s vital signs, electrolytes, and hydration level (Eddy et al., 2017). Monitoring helps in limiting host complications. Family-based therapy may be ideal in treating teenagers with the eating disorder as the teenager is incapable of making sound decisions regarding their diets (Eddy et al., 2017). For adults, a cognitive behavior therapy approach is ideal in ensuring that the adults normalize eating patterns that help in gaining weight.
Parenteral Nutrition and Enteral Nutrition
Parenteral nutrition is a type of feeding that involves the infusion of specialized forms of food intravenously. Nurses are capable of giving the patients the required levels of vitamins, calories, and minerals through parenteral feeding. Parenteral feeding is often preferred when a malnourished patient has a non-functioning or inaccessible GI tract (Lewis et al., 2018). Enteral feeding, on the other hand, is a type of feeding characterized by the delivery of food through the gastrointestinal tract (Yao et al., 2018). Enteral nutrition can either be done orally or through the use of a feeding tube. Enteral feeding is preferred in patients with functioning GI tract but is unwilling to feed orally.
For parenteral feeding, the nursing interventions involved include proper adherence to septic insertion, maintenance, and care. It is equally important to avoid hyperglycemia to prevent infections (Lewis et al., 2018). For enteral feeding, nurses should monitor the patient’s feeding tolerance when starting feeding. It is also important to assess the abdomen of the patients through the auscultation and palpation to identify distension, tenderness, and rigidity. The complications associated with total parenteral nutrition include liver failure, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, dehydration, infection, and thrombosis (Lewis et al., 2018). The complications of enteral feeding, on the other hand, include constipation, aspiration, malabsorption, nausea, and vomiting as well as tube blocking.
References
Eddy, K. T., Tabri, N., Thomas, J. J., Murray, H. B., Keshaviah, A., Hastings, E., … & Franko, D. L. (2017). Recovery from anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa at 22-Year follow-up. The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 78(2), 184-189.
Lewis, S. R., Schofield‐Robinson, O. J., Alderson, P., & Smith, A. F. (2018). Enteral versus parenteral nutrition and enteral versus a combination of enteral and parenteral nutrition for adults in the intensive care unit. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (6).
Yao, H., He, C., Deng, L., & Liao, G. (2018). Enteral versus parenteral nutrition in critically ill patients with severe pancreatitis: a meta-analysis. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 72(1), 66-68.