Hey everyone! It's Sarah with RegisteredNurseAuron.com and in this video I'm going to be going over hyperthyroidism versus hypothyroidism. In the previous videos I covered in depth the pathophysiology, the pharmacology, nursing interventions and patient education for these two conditions.
And what I want to do in this video is I want to have a quick review and let you see these two conditions, their signs and symptoms, causes, treatments, side by side so you can see what the differences are. Now after you watch this video be sure to go to my website registernurseRN.com and take the free quiz that will actually test you on your knowledge between these two conditions. And a card should be popping up so you can access that. So let's get started.
First let's start out talking about hyperthyroidism. Let the name of the condition help you. Hyper means high, excessive. So in this condition there is an excessive production of thyroid hormones. However on the flip side with hyperthyroidism, you're going to have a lot of hyperthyroidism.
hypothyroidism, there is a low production of thyroid hormones. What do thyroid hormones do? They play a vital role in how fast you burn food, stimulates your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for your reflexes, your reaction time, how fast food travels through our digestive system, increases your heart rate, your blood pressure, and your temperature.
And if you have too much of this going on, you're going to have everything in acceleration. rate so you're gonna have a super fast heart rate let super high blood pressure however if you have not a lot you're gonna have a slow heart rate low temperature things like that so what causes these conditions in hyper thyroidism a cause can be eating too much iodine remember iodine plays a role in t3 and t4 production your thyroid takes iodine and whenever you get the iodine in there it will produce that t3 and t4 however with hypothyroidism, a cause can be not having enough iodine, so you don't consume enough of it. Another cause of hyperthyroidism is Graves'disease.
Graves'disease is an autoimmune condition where your body produces TSI, thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin, and this acts like TSH on the body. So it constantly is telling the thyroid gland to produce T3 and T4. Another cause is toxic nodular goiter, also known as TN.
This is where nodular growths produce excessive thyroid hormones. Another cause is thyroid replacement medications. Say you're taking too much Synthroid, you get toxic.
It will flip you into hyperthyroidism. Now, hypo. Another cause is Hashimoto's disease. This is an autoimmune condition as well, but it's different than Graves.
This is where the body attacks the thyroid gland, so it damages it. So thyroid gland doesn't work anymore and you don't have any thyroid hormone being produced. Another cause is taking too much anti-thyroid medications, urine toxicity like PTU or tapasol. Another cause may be they have a pituitary tumor and this would stop your anterior pituitary gland from releasing TSH. And whenever that's not releasing TSH, your thyroid gland isn't going to be stimulated to produce T3 and T4.
Now what are the life threatening complications in these conditions? In hyperthyroidism, if it's not treated properly, they can enter into thyroid storm, which we covered that in another video in detail. So if you want to watch that video, you can access the card and you can watch that video. What's the life-threatening complication if hypothyroidism isn't treated? Myxedema coma.
And we talked about that in depth and you can access that in a card to watch the whole patho nursing interventions about that. So how do these patients look? What? are they going to look like with hyper and hypothyroidism?
They are going to be the complete opposite of each other. So if you see one symptom, look at what the opposite of that symptom would be and it's going to be that condition. So let's look at it.
Okay, signs and symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Here you're going to have weight loss because you're burning calories at an excessive rate. Remember T3 and T4 play a role in that.
They're going to have heat intolerance, so they're going to be sweaty. They're going to have a gorder. This is very common in Graves'disease from the thyroid gland being overstimulated.
It starts to swell. And this is also present, Gorda can be present in hypothyroidism as well. They'll be restless, irritable. Again, that's overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system and the heart rate really fast. Also fast heart rate, diarrhea, unable to focus mentally.
They're just really wired, have oily skin, be nervous and menstrual problems. Now let's flip it over and see what they look like in hypothyroidism. They're gonna have weight gain. They're not burning calories very fast.
They're going to be intolerant to cold. In myxedema comum they can actually go into hypothermia because their temperature is not being regulated. They can have a possible goiter and this is prevalent in Hashimoto's. Modo's disease and this is just due to the stimulation of the thyroid gland just being stimulated constantly and it's just not working so it starts to swell they can be extremely tired fatigued have a slow heart rate constipation memory loss mixed edema which is a waxy appearance of swelling on of the skin especially in the face and the eyes They'll have dry skin, depression, and menstrual problems.
Now, what is the treatment for these two conditions? Okay, for hyperthyroidism treatment, what are we going to do? We have a problem with too much thyroid hormone. So what would we do? We would want to give them...
anti-thyroid medications to decrease those levels. Common ones prescribed, tapazole, also known as methamazole, PTU, also called propothiouracil, iodine solutions like Lugol. solution.
Another thing usually prescribed are beta blockers such as Indrol. Why are beta blockers prescribed? To help with those signs and symptoms that's going on with this patient. They have a fast heart rate, they'll have a high blood pressure, they'll be sweaty and that'll help decrease that.
Another thing is they may be prescribed radioactive iodine therapy and remember that goes back to how your thyroid gland takes thyroid, I mean takes iodine and produces T3 and T4. So whenever they they take this, usually in a capsule, this is special iodine. It's radioactive, so it's going to go there and destroy the thyroid gland. And also a thyroidectomy, which is removal of the thyroid gland.
And these patients, remember this for hyperthyroidism, avoid salicylates and food slash supplements with iodine because this increases thyroid hormones and we don't want to increase thyroid hormones in this condition. Now, what are the treatments for hypothyroidism? Um, problem is we don't. have enough thyroid hormone so we're going to give them some thyroid hormone typically Synthroid is the most popular it's a thyroid replacement hormone and with these patients you want to avoid sedatives and narcotics because they were very sensitive to them and they can actually send them into mixed edema coma so watch those medications okay so that is about hyper and hypo thyroidism now go take that quiz on my website register nurse RN calm and check out the whole NCLEX review series on the thyroid. And thank you so much for watching and please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.