A comprehensive clinical examination is the basis for selecting further diagnostic steps:
- General physical examination – including blood pressure, pulse, body weight, height; furthermore:
- Inspection (viewing).
- Skin and mucous membranes
- Eyes [burning eyes]
- Inspection (viewing).
- Ophthalmic examination – examination of the eye with a slit lamp, determination of visual acuity and determination of refraction (examination of the refractive properties of the eye); stereoscopic findings of optic disc (area of the retina where the retinal nerve fibers gather and form the optic nerve after leaving the eyeball) and peripapillary nerve fiber layer[Differential diagnoses: Cataract (cataract); conjunctivitis (conjunctivitis); maculopathy in diabetic retinopathy (disease and, as a consequence, functional impairment of the center of the retina (changes at the point of sharpest vision, macula) resulting from diabetes mellitus (diabetes)); senile macular degeneration (disease and, as a consequence, functional impairment of the center of the retina (changes at the point of sharpest vision, macula), which can occur in old age; cystoid macular edema (accumulation of fluid in the area of sharpest vision; occurs, among other things, in uveitis (inflammation of the middle eye skin, which consists of the choroid (choroid), the corpus ciliare (corpus ciliare) and the iris) or ocular vein thrombosis)]
- Health check
Square brackets [ ] indicate possible pathological (pathological) physical findings.
