Case Study 3

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Case Study 3 A woman brings her 6-month-old son to the pediatrician. You are following the doctor as part of your physician’s assistant training. Before you enter the examining room the physician pulls the chart off the door and hands it to you. The nurse has written on the chart that the chief complaint is a group of lesions on the child’s back. You enter the room and greet the mother. A toddler girl is leaning over to play with the baby in his carrier on the floor. The baby is giggling and appears health. You notice on the chart that the baby was breast-fed from birth through his fourth month. Mom explains that the spots on the baby’s back just popped up two days ago and that the baby hasn’t had a fever and seems well. She lifts the baby up and you examine the lesions – a group of about seven to either blisterlike lesions localized to the left of the baby’s spine. They have clear fluid in them. The physician says the lesions are diagnostic. 1. What are the lesions diagnostic of? Explain how you decided. 2. Although this particular condition is somewhat unusual in babies, the lesions indicate that the child must have experienced a common childhood illness earlier. Which one? 3. The mother says that, to her knowledge, the baby has no had this common childhood illness, but that his 3-year-old sister had it four months ago, when the baby was 2 months old. Explain the link between the girl’s illness and the baby’s condition. 4. What factors probably influenced the fact that the baby did not have symptomatic illness when his sister was experiencing it? And what factors led to the eruption of lesions now? 5. Is this a dangerous condition? Why or why
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