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Facial expression
Last reviewed: 19.11.2021
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The facial expression depends not only on the patient's mental state, but also on the coloring of the skin, the type of eyes, nose, lips, teeth, cheeks, and rashes that are associated with various cytological processes. At a number of diseases the person acquires a characteristic kind.
A painful facial expression is possible in patients with severe pain that is difficult to bear.
There is a clinical triad - the face of the Hippocratica : with a pained expression, gray, with pointed features, sunken eyes, large drops of cold sweat on the forehead, which is often observed in patients with severe peritonitis.
With far-reaching heart diseases, a puffy (swollen) face with cyanotic and sometimes yellowish staining of the skin, crimson lips, open mouth, catching air is observed.
The face of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis: against the background of general pallor, bright red spots of blush on the cheeks, wide eyes, dry lips. The constant bright blush of the cheeks, which makes patients younger than their age, is observed in the defect of the mitral valve (for example, rheumatic stenosis of the mitral orifice).
With kidney diseases, a person can be sharply edematous, especially in the eyelids, against a background of pale skin coloring. These changes often make the patient's face unrecognizable.
The face with various endocrine diseases changes noticeably: Cushing's syndrome, myxedema, acromegaly, hyperthyroidism. Exophthalmos or blasphemies, i.e. The mixing of the eyeballs forward, accompanied by the widening of the eye gap, is a typical external sign of hyperthyroidism.
The masculinity of the face, the disappearance of mimicry, the appearance of folds around the form of the pouch are noted in systemic scleroderma. A characteristic mask-like face is described by IS. Turgenev in the "Notes of the Hunter". A peculiar face - paraorbital edema with bright hyperemia - is noted in patients with dermatomyositis. Manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus can be erythematous rashes in the region of the cheeks and nose, resembling a butterfly.
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