Saturday 21 September 2013

Elder Care Decisions in Supported Housing

Elder care decisions with a care home Essex based could revolve around the use of emergency treatments to keep a person alive at a time when doctors have lost hope of curing such person.

If you or a loved one is staying in a care home Essex based or need supported housing you should plan ahead. Various mechanical or artificial modes of accomplishing this are available to doctors. The relevant decisions to be made at the time could focus on comfort care, artificial nutrition (feeding via tubes) or artificial hydration (intravenous fluids), ventilator use and CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), among others.

CPR and Elder care

CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) involves repeated forceful pushing on a person's chest while simultaneously putting air into his lungs. CPR can be use in the restoration of a person's heartbeat if the heart stops or beats to an abnormal rhythm that could point to a life-threat. If such person is youthful and otherwise in good health CPR might help restore normal heartbeat. CPR as part of Elder care could also help normalize the heartbeat if the person being treated were older and otherwise in good health. But CPR could prove less effective when doctors have given up hopes of saving an older person who is already at death's door. The pushing involved in the CPR procedure needs to be very string and could even cause ribs to be broken or a lung to collapse. The process could also involve the use of medicines and defibrillation (electric shocks).

Use of Ventilator and Elder care

Ventilators are mechanical devices that can help a person to breathe. To force air into a person's lungs, you'd need to insert a tube (intubation) through the throat into the windpipe (trachea); such pipe remains connected to the ventilator machine. Medicines are used to sedate the person on whom the ventilator is being used in order to reduce the discomfort the tube brings. A tracheotomy or “trach” -- rhyming with “make” -- is performed by a doctor if the patient is found unable to breathe on his own after some days.

Such bedside surgery involves the direct insertion of the tube into the trachea via a hole in the patient's neck. A trach is preferable to intubation as a long-run aid to breathing especially as it does not require you to sedate the patient. However, the use of a trach -- with air exhaled out of the trach rather than through the vocal cords -- impairs the patient's ability to speak without being given special assistance.

Artificial hydration or nutrition in Elder care

When the patient betrays an inability to drink or eat he is fed by using intravenous liquids (IV) and/ or a feeding tube. These are useful measures especially if the patient is on the recovery path from an illness. But if the patient is dying, such treatment can add to the discomfort. For instance, the failing kidneys of the patient could feel an increased burden owing to the insertion of a plastic tube into a vein. Digestion of food becomes difficult with or without the feeding tube when a dying person's bodily functions begin to shut down. Initially, you make the feeding tube go all the way to the stomach by threading it through the nose. Over time, if tube feeding is required to be continued, a surgical insertion of the tube into the stomach is performed.

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