Question

The nurse is performing an assessment on the client. For each assessment finding, click to specify if the findings are consistent with appendicitis, diverticular disease, or Crohn's disease. Each finding may support more than one disease process.

Blood in stools:

Option 1: Consistent with diverticular disease
Option 2: Consistent with Crohn's disease
Option 3: Consistent with both diverticular disease and Crohn's disease
Option 4: Not consistent with any of the mentioned diseases

Answer 1

The presence of blood in stools can be a symptom of both diverticular disease and Crohn's disease, hence it is consistent with both conditions.

Step-by-step explanation:

When assessing whether the presence of blood in stools is consistent with certain digestive diseases, it is important to understand the characteristics of each condition. For diverticular disease, which involves inflammation and infection of diverticula in the large intestine, one of the symptoms can indeed be blood in the stool. Similarly, Crohn's disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disease that affects any part of the gastrointestinal tract, can also cause bloody stools. Therefore, the assessment finding of blood in stools may support the diagnosis of either diverticular disease or Crohn's disease, making Option 3: Consistent with both diverticular disease and Crohn's disease the correct choice.