Patient Education and Clinical Management to Prevent Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV

HIV
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HIV
What clinical management is recommended for the patient during her pregnancy to help decrease the risk of transmitting HIV to the unborn child?
Healthcare providers recommend prescribing antiretroviral therapy for all pregnant women with HIV as soon as possible. Arcangelo and Peterson (2022) indicate that zidovudine therapy is the most preferred because of its efficiency. The authors also require physicians to treat other genital infections and offer pre-labor surgical delivery as part of the clinical management approaches for preventing mother-to-child transmission (MTCT).
The patient asks the nurse how zidovudine (Retrovir) will help her unborn child from getting HIV. How should the nurse respond?
The nurse should educate the patient by explaining zidovudine is an effective drug that suppresses the viral load of an infected person to unrecognized levels. It achieves this objective by hampering viral RNA to DNA transcription through competitive inhibition and chain termination. Such a suppression makes it challenging for the virus to replicate and affect the child during the prenatal period. Informing the customer that the effectiveness is as high as 91.7% would also be encouraging (Arcangelo and Peterson, 2022). Such information would increase compliance.
What explanation about Retrovir should the nurse provide?
The nurse should inform the patient that she should take the medication as instructed for efficiency. She should ensure the timelines are 12 hours apart daily, and the timing should remain the same for all othe...