Liver Cirrhosis: Overview of Complications (Nursing)

00:00 Hi! Welcome to our video series on liver disease.

00:04 Now. You see the title there.

00:05 We're not kidding.

00:07 We're going to help you remember the F words of the complications of cirrhosis.

00:11 Now, we talked about cirrhosis in several of our videos.

00:14 But this is a way for you to have a key memory tool to remember each of these complications less.

00:20 Look at this list.

00:22 We say no to just endless bulleted point list.

00:26 We're going to give you a tool that you can help keep all of this information organized in your brain in a way that you can retrieve it because we've come up with three categories of F words to help you chunk the information.

00:39 So you remember it for your exams and for your practice, okay? I'm going to bring them in across the top of your screen.

00:47 You'll see them there on your notes.

00:49 So F is for flow, filter and formulate.

00:55 So when you're thinking of the complications that are caused by cirrhosis and liver that's been scarred just remember your liver is involved in flow, filter, and formulate.

01:07 Ready? Let's break them down into those three categories.

01:10 I want to give you just a little bit of kind of background in each one of these and you can jot down the notes if you want to but it's not essential but here's what we're talking about.

01:19 Your liver is an incredibly incredibly efficient organ and about every two and a half minutes and entire gallon of blood passes through the liver, arteries veins and capillaries.

01:32 So that's when everything is healthy and flowing smoothly.

01:35 It takes just two and a half minutes for an entire gallon of blood to make it through all those lobules in hepatocytes, okay.

01:42 Now we talked about filtering, we're going to talk about how the liver as the blood passes through the liver, it breaks down, right? It filters things.

01:52 So it breaks down and filters medications like over the counter medications, prescription medications, alcohol, caffeine and other toxins that are even made by our bodies.

02:04 Now two I'd like you to write in your notes, ammonia and bilirubin.

02:09 So go ahead and put those in ammonia and bilirubin.

02:13 Those have some pretty significant effects on the body.

02:17 Now we done flow, a gallon every two and a half minutes, we've done filter, right as it moves through the liver, It's breaking down these things that we need to be broken down.

02:26 And the last one is formulate.

02:29 So on that one if you wouldn't mind writing down plasma proteins, specifically albumin and clotting factors.

02:37 Now if you're in a super rush if you just look at that, you've got a pretty good framework right there, about what you're going to be looking for in patients with cirrhosis, but we're going to go through and break down in more detail than we have in some of the other videos about what each one of these categories entails.