Dysfunction – Hepatobiliary System (Nursing)

00:00 Now let's look at some very specific plumbing and performance problems. Now if you know anyone with cystic fibrosis, this is a chronic disease, and it is a heartbreaker, but one, just one of the issues that cystic fibrosis patients has to deal with is that they end having this super thick mucus. It gets stuck in their lungs, but it also gets stuck in their pancreas. So when this big old thick mucus blocks the ducts in their pancreas, it makes it impossible for the pancreatic enzymes to get to the intestine. So think about it as a bunch of a lot of mucus plugs all the way throughout the pancreas, so the pancreas can't deliver those powerful digestive juices to the small intestine. So, patients with cystic fibrosis have to take pancreatic enzymes by mouth every time they eat. It's just 1 more thing that they have to do on a daily basis because they can't get the natural pancreatic juices into their intestines in an appropriate or adequate amount. Now we talked about bile duct blockage. Right? That's when we talked about gallstones. The word for that is cholelithiasis. What I'd like you to do is take a look at that picture. You see we've got a gallbladder there and it's got some kind of yellowish-looking stones. If one of those stones launches out, travels out from that gallbladder, it can get lodged or stuck in any part of that system. Now looking at the drawing, imagine if you place your finger on different parts of that hepatobiliary tract and see that everything upstream from where the gallstone lodges is going to have the -itis that we talked about. So that's why you can have hepatitis, cholecystitis, pancreatitis, all in the same patient. So it's about location, location, location.

01:57 So when you're thinking about the hepatobiliary system and plumbing or performance problems, remember two of our best examples, cystic fibrosis and how that mucus is so thick it plugs up the pancreas so it can't get its digestive juices into that system and bile duct blockage which a great example is gallstones that make their way out of that gallbladder and block up the system.