30 minutes

See exactly how drugs work in your patients with heart failure or pulmonary edema during immediate and continuing treatment. Know exactly what their actions mean to your nursing care before, during, and after drug therapy.

With this DVD, you'll learn:

• how a combination of loop and thiazide-related diuretics can maximize diuresis in a patient with acute heart failure
• how dobutamine stimulates beta1- and beta2-adrenergic receptors to increase cardiac output
• how a phosphodiesterase inhibitor prevents the blockage of cyclic adenosine monophosphate, which reduces preload and afterload and improves cardiac output
• why nitroprusside reduces afterload more dramatically than nitroglycerin, but poses greater risks to the patient
• why an angiotensin-receptor blocker may be prescribed instead of an ACE inhibitor
• how ACE inhibitors can prevent bradykinin from breaking down in the lungs, causing the characteristic ACE-inhibitor-induced cough
• why beta-adrenergic blockers may initially cause your patient's heart failure symptoms to worsen - and how to prevent this....and much more.