What’s the “Take-Home”?
Primary care physicians see numerous patients with nonspecific symptoms such as nausea and fever. Most of these patients have an acute and self-limiting viral illness. However, complaints of acute vision loss are relatively rare in general practice, and most primary care physicians have neither the training nor the equipment to properly evaluate these patients.
Ignoring the uncommon visual loss, however, was not the right approach. Instead, Dr L should have immediately referred the patient to an ophthalmologist or the emergency department (since it was the weekend), because a detached retina is a serious condition that can lead to permanent vision loss (as it did in this case).
Bottom Line – Familiar complaints can easily distract from the more unusual, but no symptom should be discredited.
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