Living with painful endometriosis - A struggle for coherence. A qualitative study

OBJECTIVES

The study sought to examine women's experience of painful endometriosis including long-term aspects, social consequences, impact of treatment and development of own coping strategies.

STUDY DESIGN

This qualitative study was based on 16 individual interviews analyzed according to grounded theory. The thirteen women (age 24-48) were recruited at a pain clinic in Stockholm, Sweden.

RESULTS

A theory illustrating women's experience of living with painful endometriosis was developed with three categories and one core category. Bidirectional interactions between the categories and with the core category were found. Endometriosis influenced the women's sensations, feelings and reactions, creating a sense of difference from other women (category: Woman with painful endometriosis). The condition led to either helpful or harmful encounters with health care and significant others (category: Dependence). It also had overall physical, social and existential consequences (category: A ruined life). To cope, the women had to struggle for coherence by searching for understanding, coping and meaning (core category: Living with painful endometriosis).

CONCLUSIONS

Living with severe painful endometriosis signified a struggle for coherence. The women needed to deal with feelings of difference, dependence and a ruined life and thus struggled for understanding, coping and meaning. Health-care providers should promote the struggle for coherence by explaining the feeling of difference, minimizing dependence and supporting the process of disease-related grief.

“Tears are also included” - women’s experience of treatment for painful endometriosis at a pain clinic

Aims

To explore how women perceive and are affected by treatment for painful endometriosis.

Method

Qualitative methodology with emergent design was used. Sixteen semi-structured interviews (including 3 follow-ups) with 13 women (age 20–47) treated at a pain clinic, were analysed with Grounded Theory.

Results

A preliminary model describes how women experience treatment for painful endometriosis and its consequences in one core category and three categories. The core category; Surviving painful endometriosis, described the women’s promoting strategies like Knowledge, Adaption and Planning, and inhibiting reactions as Anxiety and Resignation. The three interacting categories; Woman with painful endometriosis, included experiences of “The self” and “The body”. “The environment/significant others” described the environments’ support. Missed opportunities were described as a lack of participation in important life areas; “Social life”, “Career” and “Descendants”. “New possibilities” were experienced when pain disappeared or could be controlled. Dependent on health care included the experiences of “Treatments” from helpful to harmful and “Encounters with health care” from empowering to humiliating.

Conclusions

The suffering of women when exposed to painful endometriosis can lead to missed opportunities in several important areas of life. Hormonal and symptomatic treatments, as well as positive encounters of health care are important for the women’s possibility to develop working surviving strategies.

Volume Kinetics of Intravenous Fluid Therapy in the Prehospital Setting

Introduction:

To study the volume effect of isotonic and hypertonic crystalloid fluid during ambulance transports after mild trauma, a prospective case-control study was initiated, using the ambulance and helicopter transport system in Stockholm.

Methods:

The hemodilution resulting from intravenous infusion of 1.0 L of Ringer's acetate solution (n = 7) or 250 ml of 7.5% sodium chloride (n = 3) over 30 minutes (min) was measured every 10 min during 1 hour when fluid therapy was instituted at the scene of an accident, or on arrival at the hospital. The dilution was studied by volume kinetic analysis and compared to that of matched, healthy controls who received the same fluid in hospital.

Result:

The hemodilution at the end of the infusions averaged 7.7% in the trauma patients and 9.1% in the controls, but the dilution was better maintained after trauma. The kinetic analysis showed that the size of the body fluid space expanded by Ringer's solution was 4.6 L and 3.8 L for the trauma and the control patients, respectively, while hypertonic saline expanded a slightly larger space. For both fluids, trauma reduced the elimination rate constant by approximately 30%.

Conclusion:

Mild trauma prolonged the intravascular persistence of isotonic and hypertonic crystalloid fluid as compared to a control group.

[Volume kinetics--a new method to control intravenous fluid infusion]

The body's handling of fluid given by intravenous infusion can be analysed and simulated by means of volume kinetics, in which pharmacokinetic principles are applied to dilution-time profiles obtained during fluid therapy. In volume kinetics, the emphasis is on the distribution of fluid to body fluid spaces which accordingly become expanded. These spaces do not always correspond to known anatomical or physiological fluid compartments. The time course of the effect of volume fluid distribution to these spaces may be investigated by means of computer-assisted simulation, or a nomogram based on values for volume kinetic variables obtained from infusion experiments.

Stability of the interstitial matrix after crystalloid fluid loading studied by volume kinetic analysis

To investigate if fluid therapy changes the prerequisites for the development of oedema, four i.v. infusions of Ringer's solution 25 ml kg-1 were given over 15 or 30 min in a randomized crossover study to 10 healthy male volunteers, aged 28-40 (mean 31) yr. Blood haemoglobin concentration, measured every 5 min for 90 min, and urinary excretion were used as input data for volume kinetic analysis. The results showed that the elimination rate constant (kr) was higher when another infusion had been given earlier on the same day (208 vs 140 ml min-1; P < 0.002) and the size of V1 was larger during the 15-min infusions (4.7 vs 3.2 litre; P < 0.02). However, the size of V2 and the rate constant for the exchange of fluid between V1 and V2 were similar during all infusions. We conclude that a fluid challenge makes elimination of further infused fluid more effective but does not change compliance with volume expansion in healthy volunteers.

Volume kinetics of Ringer solution after surgery for hip fracture

PURPOSE

To study the time course of volume changes during and after infusion of Ringer's solution in elderly patients after a standardised trauma.

METHODS

The kinetics of 12.5 ml.kg-1 Ringer's solution infused over 30 min were studied in ten patients one day after surgery for hip fracture (mean age, 70 yr) and in an age- and sex-matched control group. Hemodilution, as measured every five minutes for 90 min, was used to calculate the size of the fluid space expanded by the fluid (V) and the elimination rate constant (kr). The baseline fluid balance status in the patients and the controls was compared by bioelectrical impedance analysis.

RESULTS

The size of V was 4.1 +/- 0.51 (mean +/- SEM) in the patients and 3.4 +/- 0.21 in the controls (P:NS) while the corresponding results for kr were 85 +/- 12 and 166 +/- 27 ml.min-1, respectively (P < 0.04). Bioelectrical impedance analysis showed that the extracellular fluid space and the total body water volumes did not differ between the two groups. Computer simulations based on the data obtained for V and kr indicate that trauma increases the dilution of the plasma volume and the retention of fluid in response to slow and moderate infusion rates, while these indices of short-term changes in fluid balance remain the same in the two groups during very rapid infusion of Ringer's solution.

CONCLUSION

A slower elimination rate increased dilution of plasma and retention of fluid when Ringer's solution was infused in elderly trauma patients.

Volume kinetics of Ringer solution, dextran 70, and hypertonic saline in male volunteers

BACKGROUND

A knowledge of the distribution of different fluids given by intravenous infusion is basic to the understanding of the effects of fluid therapy. Therefore, a mathematical model was tested to analyze the volume kinetics of three types of fluids.

METHODS

The authors infused 25 ml/kg of Ringer acetate solution, 5 ml/kg of 6% dextran 70 in 0.9% NaCl, and 3 ml/kg of 7.5% NaCl over 30 min in 8 male volunteers aged from 25 to 36 years (mean, 31 years) and measured the changes in total hemoglobin, serum albumin, and total blood water over time. The changes were expressed as fractioned dilution and then plotted against time. The curves were fitted to a one-volume and a two-volume model, which allowed an estimation of the size of the body fluid space expanded by the fluid (V) and the elimination rate constant (k(r) to be made.

RESULTS

The changes in blood water concentration indicated a mean size of V of 5.9 1 (+/- 0.8, SEM) for Ringer's solution, 2.6 (+/- 0.3) 1 for dextran, and 1.2 (+/- 0.1) 1 for hypertonic saline. The corresponding values of k(r) were 94 (+/- 42), 12 (+/- 6), and 30 (+/- 4) ml/min, respectively. Blood hemoglobin indicated a degree of dilution similar to that indicated by blood water. Serum albumin indicated a more pronounced dilution, which resulted in a larger expandable volume and a greater mean square error for the curvefitting. The larger volume obtained for serum albumin can probably be explained by a loss of intravascular albumin into the tissues along with the infused fluid.

CONCLUSIONS

The distribution of intravenous fluids can be analyzed by a kinetic model adapted for fluid spaces, but slightly different results are obtained, depending on the marker used to indicate dilution of the primary fluid space. Analysis and simulation of plasma volume expansion by this model is a tool that can help the anesthetist to better plan fluid therapy.

Plasma dilution and the rate of infusion of Ringer's solution

Changes in the volume of the fluid space expanded by i.v. infusion of Ringer's acetate solution have been analysed recently using mathematical models. Data obtained by such analyses allow simulation of the dilution of the plasma volume during infusion of the solution at different rates. To obtain basic kinetic data for such simulations, the plasma dilution-time curves were measured during and after i.v. infusion of Ringer's solution 25 ml kg-1 over 30 min in 15 healthy male volunteers (mean age 31 yr) and over 30, 45 and 80 min in six females (mean age 32 yr). Based on these experiments, nomograms were constructed from which the rate of infusion of Ringer's solution and the infusion time required to obtain a defined plasma dilution in both males and females can be estimated together with the infusion rate needed to maintain the dilution at the level reached.

Central and regional hemodynamics during acute hypovolemia and volume substitution in volunteers

OBJECTIVES

To study the central and regional hemodynamics and oxygen consumption during acute hypovolemia and volume replacement with crystalloid and colloid solutions.

DESIGN

Prospective, randomized, laboratory investigation.

SETTING

Clinical physiology department at a university hospital.

SUBJECTS

Eighteen healthy male volunteers, between 21 and 35 yrs of age (mean 26).

INTERVENTIONS

Catheters were inserted in the cubital vein, brachial artery, pulmonary artery, thoracic aorta, right hepatic vein, and left renal vein for measurements of systemic arterial and pulmonary arterial pressures, total and central blood volumes, extravascular lung water, and the splanchnic (liver) and renal blood flow rates. The exchange of respiratory gases was measured, using the Douglas bag technique. Measurements were made before and after a venesection of 900 mL and again after the subjects had been randomized and received volume replacement with either 900 mL of Ringer's acetate solution 900 mL of albumin 5%, or 900 plus 900 mL of Ringer's solution.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Withdrawal of 900 mL of blood decreased cardiac output and the splanchnic and renal blood flow rates by between -16% and -20%. The oxygen uptake decreased by 13% in the whole body, while it remained unchanged in the liver and kidney. The systemic and pulmonary vascular resistances increased, while the extravascular lung water decreased. Autotransfusion of fluid from tissue to blood was indicated by hemodilution, which was most apparent in subjects showing only a minor change in peripheral resistance. Cardiac output, blood volume, and systemic vascular resistance were significantly more increased by infusion of 900 mL of albumin 5% than by 900 mL of Ringer's solution. However, infusion of 1800 mL of Ringer's solution increased the extravascular lung water and the pulmonary arterial pressures to significantly above baseline, while no significant difference from baseline was found after 900 mL of Ringer's acetate solution.

CONCLUSIONS

Withdrawal of 900 mL of blood induces similar reductions in cardiac output as in the splanchnic and renal blood flow rates. A fluid shift from the extravascular to the intravascular fluid compartment might restore up to 50% of the blood loss. Optimal volume substitution with Ringer's solution can be effectuated by infusing between 100% and 200% of the amount of blood lost.