Chronic Bronchitis Case Study

1 What clinical findings correlate with M.K.’s chronic bronchitis? What type of treatment and recommendations would be appropriate for M.K.’s chronic bronchitis?
M.K. is a 45-year-old female; she is 5’5” and weighs 225 lbs. Her BMI is 37.4, which makes her obese and people with chronic bronchitis are usually overweight. She has history of smoking about 22 years, which is a common cause of chronic bronchitis because she was repeatedly breathing in fumes that irritate your lungs and airway tissues. (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 2011) Some clinical manifestations that M.K. has is her age, “because this disease progresses slowly, middle-aged and older people are more likely to be diagnosed with chronic bronchitis” (Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 3rd ed., 2006); her weight; chronic cough with sputum, which is more severe in the mornings, her cough is more severe in the mornings because when people with chronic bronchitis are laying down everything has time to build up, so when they finally get up in the mornings everything that was getting built up wants to get out; history of smoking, “when smoke or other irritants are inhaled, the cilia become paralyzed or snap off. When this occurs, the cilia are no longer able to move mucus, and the airways become inflamed, narrowed, and clogged. This leads to difficulty breathing” (Gale Encyclopedia of
She has stage 2 hypertension: because her systolic blood pressure is greater than 139 mmHg. She is on Lotensin, which is an ACE inhibitor and it works by relaxing the blood vessels so that blood can flow more easily. This medication is used to treat high blood pressure. She is also on Lasix (furosemide), which is a loop diuretic that prevents ones body from absorbing too much salt, by allowing the salt to pass through the urine instead. Lasix is used to treat fluid retention (edema) in people with congestive heart failure and it also treats