Oral Health | Clinical and Risk Asessment | Performing an extra-oral and facial examination

Performing an extra-oral and facial examination
Session overview
Description
This session describes the processes for performing extra-oral and facial examinations, and the reasons for carrying them out.

'Learning objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• explain the importance of extra-oral examination
• describe the sequence of extra-oral examination
• demonstrate the examination of a lump
• describe the cervical lymph chain and how to examine it
• explain how to examine the different areas of the face

Extra-oral examination is an essential part of analysing a patient’s presenting complaint. Clues as to the presenting and underlying medical conditions may be gleaned from close observation of the patient and thorough clinical examination.

An understanding of the presentations of many congenital and acquired conditions is essential in order to maximise the information gathered from observation and extra-oral examination.

This session is part of a broader learning programme. By purely completing this session, you should not expect to be competent enough to carry out these procedures unsupervised.

In this session, you will see the value of extra-oral examinations and step-by-step guides on how to perform them.