Hello, med students. My name is Zach Olson, and thank you for downloading this week's

episode of the EM Clerkship Podcast. I received a quick email a few weeks ago that basically

said, hey, Zach, a podcast about eye problems, such as abrasions and ulcerations, would be really

helpful. Sincerely, Chris. So here's the deal. Before we talk about

the individual eye diagnoses, which for the record in emergency medicine are classically

broken down into three chief complaint categories, so red eye, vision loss, and eye trauma.

Before we go into each of those, which we will do eventually,

we need to cover just a basic approach to the eye complaint.

Because it's a very specialized exam,

and we only do it for eye complaints.

And in my experience, especially depending on the institution that you're training at and how available your ophthalmology is,

many of you don't actually know how to do this exam until today.

Let's learn this.

Today, we are covering the overall approach to somebody with an eye complaint.

Step one. And the most important thing that you need to remember is that with eye complaints, any I complaint, when you present these to your

attending, you add visual acuity to the vital signs in your presentation. It's the most important vital sign for the eye.

That's the way you look smart and get your attending's eyebrows to raise up and listen. One liner,

history, pertinent positives, then boom, visual acuity. There's apps and little pocket cards that do

this, but that is the most important thing to remember.

Visual acuity is the vital sign of the eye, and you need to treat it as such.

Put it in your initial presentation, and it's going to be noticed, and it's going to be appreciated. Now, after we do that, on to our other four basic core steps to evaluating an eye complaint.

In my mind, I think of these steps in anatomical order, even if it's not necessarily the order

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