Famous Among Top Surgeons in the 90s
Chapter 776 - Chapter 776 Ascites

Chapter 776: Ascites Chapter 776: Ascites Patients like this come in every day, it’s just that today the doctor happened to come across a stubborn and persistent little friend. Gong Xiangbin scratched his head, not knowing how to continue talking to the child. He took out his phone: “I’ll call your grandma and grandpa.”

“You don’t need to call them. I’ll donate to my mom.” Yangyang said, tears beginning to fall.

Gong Xiangbin quickly pulled out a tissue to wipe the little friend’s tears: “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t want my mom to die.” Yangyang stood in the doctor’s office, looking up and crying his heart out.

The child cried so heartbreakingly, it was too much for anyone who heard. The crying brought the doctors in the office to their knees.

“Do we have any candy?”

“Look for some cookies.”

The doctors and nurses were all looking for candy to see how they could calm the child down sooner.

Zhao Zhaowei saw the child crying and felt the urge to cry himself, so he went back to his ward to see if he could find some toys to bring out.

Xie Wanying, however, was wondering what was going on, why Yangyang’s Mom was suddenly asked to discharge.

In the past few days during the morning rounds, Senior Tao had not shown such an attitude. However, due to the hurried nature, the morning rounds were always rushed, almost like a quick glimpse. Unless it was a patient who needed surgery, there would be a focused pre-surgical discussion within the group. So the only possibility was that because this was the surgical unit, for patients like Yangyang’s Mom who could not wait for a liver transplant and were not eligible for surgery, the options were either to be transferred to internal medicine for treatment or to be discharged from the hospital – they couldn’t continue occupying a bed. Maybe they could be admitted again for surgery when they were ready.

She decided to go check on the patient’s condition in the ward herself after giving it much thought. Xie Wanying headed towards Yangyang’s Mom’s ward.

Since she wasn’t in charge of the patient, she generally wouldn’t take the initiative to show concern to avoid conflict with the attending physician.

In the ward, Yangyang’s Mom was half-reclined on the bed, seemingly much more spirited, which must mean her condition had improved somewhat for the doctor to call for her discharge.

Xie Wanying approached the patient and asked, “May I listen to your heart and lungs?”

Yangyang’s Mom recognized her and nodded.

The ascites had been drained, and the patient’s abdomen wasn’t as severely bloated as a ball anymore, but the root cause of the disease wasn’t gone, the ascites would certainly come back. Upon seeing that the patient’s belly button was protruded, Xie Wanying knew that the ascites hadn’t disappeared at all.

Speaking of ascites, more accurately, it should be called peritoneal effusion. In a healthy state, there’s around 200 milliliters of ascites that serve as lubrication for the bowel movements. Anything above 200 is considered pathological, indicative of effusion. But both laypeople and doctors usually just refer to it as ascites.

There are many causes for peritoneal effusion. The most common is liver-related ascites, which is due to liver complications leading to ascites.

Other causes can be related to the heart, kidneys, peritonitis, or other systemic diseases.

As for the principle behind liver cirrhosis with ascites, like Yangyang’s Mom has, there are generally two theories in the medical community. One is known as the classical theory, which suggests that portal hypertension, hypoalbuminemia, and lymphatic outflow obstruction, among other factors, lead to ascites. The other is called the overflow theory, which indicates that the retention of water and sodium forms ascites and is unrelated to the other factors listed earlier. This theory has been accepted because many patients clinically do not show characteristics like portal hypertension and hypoalbuminemia.

The two theories seem contradictive at first. Later, doctors came to believe that most patients exhibit the classical theory in the early phase and the overflow theory in the later stage, with each theory displaying different stages of the disease’s evolution.

Logically, Yangyang’s Mom would be in the stage explained by the overflow theory, where fluid and sodium retention is associated with the imbalance of the renin-angiotensin system and the adrenergic-adrenal system.