Eye Infection Specialist Questions and Answers

Urgent care clinics are a great place to go to receive medical attention for eye infections of several different kinds! Whether your eye infection is bacterial, viral, or fungal, an urgent care clinic should have no problem in providing excellent treatment to do away with the infection. At Columbia Clinic Urgent Care, our board-certified physicians and team of medical professionals would be happy to provide expert and compassionate treatment of any eye infection you bring to us that is not life-threatening.

If you are experiencing an eye infection with life-threatening complications or risks of permanent blindness, you should go to an emergency room to receive proper medical attention. If you are experiencing partial or complete vision loss or severe pain, you should seek emergency room care for your eye infection.

Pink eye, or conjunctivitis, occurs when the conjunctiva in your eye becomes inflamed by a viral, bacterial, or allergic reaction. The conjunctiva is the transparent membrane that lines your eyelid and the whites of your eyes. When it is infected, the small blood vessels in the conjunctiva become inflamed, which makes them more visible and gives the white part of your eyes a red or pink hue.

However, pink eye is but one among many different types of eye infections! As such, the main difference between conjunctivitis and eye infections in general is that pink eye is one example of an eye infection, while an eye infection can refer to several different types of infections. For instance, the following is a list of other types of eye infections besides pink eye:

– Blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelids)
– Cellulitis (infected eye tissues)
– Endophthalmitis (severe inflammation of the inside of the eye)
– Keratitis (infected cornea)
– Ocular herpes (herpes simplex virus of the eye)
– Sty (pimple-like bump that appears on the outer edges of the eyelids)
– Uveitis (infected uvea)

Eye infections that are potentially life-threatening or are considered medical emergencies include orbital cellulitis, keratitis, or endophthalmitis.

While many of the symptoms of infected eyes also appear with irritated eyes experiencing an allergic reaction, eye infections typically have extra symptoms that do not occur with allergic eye irritations. As such, both allergic eye irritations and eye infections often occur with symptoms like redness, itching, burning, and clear watery discharge. However, with eye infections, you often experience other symptoms such as pain or a gritty feeling in your eyes and thick or mucus-like discharge.

With that said, the most telltale way to determine if your eye is merely irritated or if it is infected is whether or not you are experiencing any pain. If you are not experiencing any eye pain, it is most likely an allergic eye irritation and not an eye infection. At Columbia Clinic Urgent Care, we would be happy to provide expert treatment for either an eye infection or an allergic eye irritation!

If you are looking for an eye infection specialist in Portland, Happy Value, or Tigard, Oregon, we welcome you to come to Columbia Clinic Urgent Care! You can either schedule an appointment through our website, by calling us, or by visiting the clinic nearest you for a walk-in appointment. Please visit our website for clinic locations and hours of operation.