Causes of Glomerulonephritis: Overview (Nursing)

00:01 Okay, So let's look at the major causes of what can actually cause glomerulonephritis.

00:07 I'm going to look at several causes, We're just going to introduce these to give you a framework and then we'll break them down.

00:12 One of the causes is infections.

00:15 Okay, well that makes sense because we know glomerulonephritis.

00:18 Thats "itis" an infection is usually one of the causes of inflammation.

00:22 There can also be autoimmune disease.

00:25 Auto means self and immune you know, what that does, our system to fight off bad guys.

00:30 So that means your immune system turns on you.

00:33 So it starts attacking parts of your body that you would prefer not be attacked.

00:39 There's also vasculitis.

00:41 Hey, there's that itís again.

00:43 So itís is inflammation and Vasco that's referring to blood vessels, cool! You are getting the hang of this that's really good.

00:50 So vasculitis is when the body's immune system attacks the blood vessels.

00:56 Okay, it can be caused by an infection medications or even some other diseases.

01:00 But when those vessels become attacked, they become thicker and stiffer and the blood supply is much less through those vessels.

01:08 Now, there's conditions that scar the glomeruli.

01:11 I know that sounds kind of vague right now, but I'll explain more as we go through the rest of the video series.

01:17 Now, we always have an other category it seems, right? because we're trying to give you a very complete list when you're caring for a patient and you're seeing that their renal function is not really what you need it to be, you need to be asking why why why is the patient's renal function suffering.

01:33 Glomerulonephritis is obviously one of the top reasons.

01:37 So you want to be thinking through does my patient have an infection, do they have an autoimmune disease do they have vasculitis, do they have things that are scarring they're glomeruli, or did they fallin in this other category.

01:49 Now other includes illegal drug use which again illegal drugs are illegal for a reason.

01:56 No good comes from their use but amyloidosis is one you may or may not have heard of so I wanted to give you just a quick blip on that one.

02:05 Now amyloidosis is rare, but that doesn't mean you won't see one because crazy things happen in the hospital every day.

02:13 So amyloidosis is a rare condition and it has some different causes but it's when this protein called amyloid which is why it's called amyloidosis starts to build up in the body and it builds up in the tissue and the organs.

02:27 So when it builds up in the kidneys, that's why you end up with problems in your glomerulus, hence the cause of glomerulonephritis.

02:35 Okay, So we've given you five major categories.

02:39 Now if you take notes like I do I need to know ahead of time how things are going to go.

02:43 We're going to break down each one of those five categories for you dig down a little deeper.