A case report: Nursing interventions on a patient with anaphylactic shock in ICU

The care plan of a 42-year-old woman with anaphylactic shock, secondary to ingestion of amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, with upper airway involvement due to laryngeal angioedema, is presented. Previously she had had two episodes of angioedema of unknown origin. The incidence of this phenomenon is between 3.2 and 10 cases/100,000 people/year.

An evaluation was made and three altered necessities stood out: breathing and circulation (she needed mechanical ventilation and noradrenalin perfusion), elimination (she required furosemide to keep an acceptable diuresis time), and hygiene and skin protection (she presented generalised hyperaemia, lip, lingual and oropharyngeal oedema). The hospital's Clinical Research Ethics Committee requested the patient's informed consent to access her clinical history.

According to the altered necessities, seven diagnoses were prioritised according to NANDA taxonomy: risk of allergic response, risk of infection, risk of ineffective renal perfusion, decreased cardiac output, impaired spontaneous ventilation, risk of unstable blood glucose level, and risk of dysfunctional gastrointestinal motility.

Scores of outcome criteria showed a favourable evolution after 24hours. The development of a standardised NANDA-NOC-NIC language in the clinical case presented allowed us to organise the nursing work, facilitating recording and normalising clinical practice. As a limitation of this case, we didn't have serial plasma levels of histamine and tryptase to assess the evolution of anaphylactic symptoms. Highlight the importance of health education in a patient with a history of angioedema.