Respiratory Acidosis Research Paper

Respiratory Acidosis
My topic for my paper is Respiratory acidosis. The article I chose in relation to my patient in ICU was Interpreting Arterial Blood Gases by Georgina Casey. I chose this article because it is informative and helpful to me as a soon to be graduating nurse. Throughout this paper I will give a brief description of my patient, the pathophysiology of respiratory acidosis, the article summary and describe how this is helpful to me as a beginner nurse.
My Patient
My patient was a 70-year-old female who came in for a scheduled mitral valve repair. The surgeon was unable to repair the valve so the valve was replaced with a mechanical valve. Due to the inability to repair the valve and the patient’s undiagnosed sleep apnea; the patient was on bypass for four and a half hours. When staff later tried to extubate her, and use a BiPap, she became acidotic and was intubated again. Her main diagnosis was respiratory acidosis r/t undiagnosed sleep apnea, prolonged anesthesia, bypass use and

Respiratory acidosis results from impaired ventilation which produces an increase in PaCO2 levels, leading to increased carbonic acid and H+ ion concentration in the plasma, and lowered pH. If the respiratory acidosis continues, compensation occurs via increased retention of bicarbonate and increased secretion of acid in the kidneys. This is a slow process, taking six to 12 hours for activation and three to four days for full effect. Signs and symptoms of hypercapnia and acidosis are: vasodilation, flushing and warm peripheries; headache and raised intracranial pressure (due to ions, depending on the concentration of vasodilation of coronary blood vessels); drowsiness, confusion and coma; flapping tremor, and muscle weakness. The goal would be to remove the excess CO2 but removing too much could result in the patient becoming