Heart Failure Treatment - Essay Example

The main treatment goals for Mr. Russell’s case include determining the cause of presenting symptoms and developing a treatment plan to alleviate the symptoms. The patient presents with three major symptoms of palpitations, intermittent lightheadedness, bilateral edema of the legs, and crackles in the lungs. Palpitations are commonly experienced among patients with hypertension. However, heart failure may be a potential cause in the case of patients. Other potential causes such as stress, anxiety, and history of over-the-counter medications, including stimulants and cough treatment medications that contain pseudoephedrine may be assessed. Palpitations that are accompanied by dizziness, shortness of breath, and fainting may indicate heart failure. Lightheadedness may as well be experienced in heart failure due to insufficient pumping of blood to major organs, including the brain. Still, it may as well result from taking hypertensive medications, and hypertensive headache. The other major symptoms are bilateral edema of 3+ RLE and 2+ LLE. Edema of the feet is one of the common signs of underlying heart failure. The treatment plan will focus on alleviating symptoms of palpitations, lightheadedness, and bilateral leg edema (Krause et al., 2017).

Pharmacological Plan and Rationale        

Pharmacological treatment should focus on treating heart failure. In this case, HTZ 20mg should be substituted by Furosemide 40mg twice (Parekh et al., 2017). The change in the treatment plan will limit the use of HTCZ, which potentially might have caused lightheadedness as a side effect reported by the patient. Using a lower dose of Furosemide will add up to the diuresis capacity, thus reducing the edema. Instead of HCTZ, benazepril 5mg can be administered to manage high blood pressure. Treatment of palpitations will focus on balancing electrolytes and restricting the patient from using stimulants. Hyperlipidemia can be addressed by taking 20mg Atorvastatin once daily. Atorvastatin breaks down lipids and cholesterol, thus reducing the high levels of lipids in the blood (Roldan, Ho & Ho, 2018). Lastly, crackles in the lungs can be managed through pulmonary rehabilitation

Five Key Education Points 

The key education points for Mr. Russell include medication adherence, healthy diet, weight monitoring, behavioral modification, and exercise. Patients should be helped to understand that compliance with the medications plays a crucial role in the effective management of diabetes. They need to take individual responsibility for their health by taking drugs as prescribed and attending clinic visits without defaulting (Di Chiara et al., 2018). The patient should be encouraged to eat a healthy diet, such as a DASH diet recommended for hypertensive individuals. The DASH diet emphasizes the need to eat minimizes salt in the diet; eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, less sugary foods, and low-fat products. Continuous weight monitoring will help the patient keep watch on his diet and detect potential weight gain, which is a critical assessment aspect. Behavioral modifications entail the cessation of cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse, which can cause life-threatening complications. Moderate exercise is encouraged to keep the body fit, improve heart rate, and burn calories or fats. It is important to discourage strenuous and lengthy exercise, which may cause fatigue and palpitations (Joseph et al., 2016).

Change of Plan 

The selected plan of care can apply in case the patient was African-American. The population has increased chances for heart failure as compared to other races. However, some aspects of the plan, such as the selection of medications, may change. For example, I will stop using ACE inhibitors, e.g., benazepril, because they are not effective in this population. Instead, I will administer Angiotensin II receptor inhibitors, e.g., losartan 50mg daily, which can manage high blood pressure Furthermore, I would expand the target due to the high prevalence of heart failure in this population. Instead of focusing on the individual patient, I would focus the education on the entire family given the relatively higher predisposition of Blacks to these conditions as supported by the wide genetic predilection (Musemwa & Gadegbeku, 2017).