Hi, I'm Meris, and in this video, I'm going to be talking to you about head and face assessment. I'm going to be following along using our health assessment flashcards. These are available on our website, leveluprn.com. And if you have a set for yourself, I would recommend you go ahead and pull them out and we can study together. All right. Let's get started.
Now, when we're talking about assessing the head, we're going to be doing a lot of this visually just when we are interacting with our patient and having a conversation. While I'm talking to my patient, while I'm inspecting, looking with my eyes, I'm going to be looking at things such as the general size and shape of the head. I'm going to be looking for things like asymmetry or any lumps or bumps that I might see on the skin. I can go ahead and also palpate my patient's head. And here I could be looking for tenderness. I could be looking for any kind of hidden things that I may not be able to see due to hair or positioning. I'm going to feel for those kinds of alterations as well. And then I'm also going to palpate the sinuses. So there's multiple sinuses in the head. The big ones that we're going to be talking about palpating, though, are going to be the frontal sinus and the maxillary sinuses. So when I palpate there, when I touch or push there, it should be nontender. However, we are going to look and see if our patient reports any tenderness in this area upon palpation.
Some other things that we may assess when it comes to the head would be the TMJ, the temporomandibular joint. And here in this joint space, we're going to be looking for things like range of motion. So for instance, I might say, "Can you open and close your mouth?" So it might be something like this, where you're going to put your fingers on either side to feel that joint and-- right? Now, what am I doing here? What is the point of me touching right here? Well, the reason I have my fingers here when I ask my patients to do range of motion, passive range of motion, is so that I can feel for something called crepitus. And crepitus is that kind of Rice Krispy like popping or snapping. That sort of feeling of something under the skin. That's going to be called crepitus. And crepitus tells me that there's some kind of dysfunction in that joint. It could be something like we're missing some variety of cartilage, or maybe we have some really tight musculoskeletal things going on in that region. But whatever the cause of the issue may be, crepitus is going to be an abnormal finding that I would want to be on the lookout for. I also, of course, want to see if my patient is reporting any subjective pain when I have them open and close their mouth like that, or does their jaw get stuck open? Do they have a hard time closing that jaw back shut? All of these things are going to be important when we're assessing the head.
Now, another important thing to remember when we are assessing the head and face is that we're not just looking for alterations from baseline in terms of physiological changes or objective things such as lumps or bumps or asymmetry. Another thing we will be assessing for is for the patient's sort of general affect. Does the expression on their face match the general vibe and mood of the situation? If we're having a very serious conversation, and they're giggling and laughing and looking into space and having a really hard time focusing, that's going to be a very different assessment finding than if we're having a very serious conversation and the patient is talking to me the way I'm talking to you. This would be an affect that is consistent with the mood of the patient and appropriate for the situation. So don't forget that we are not just assessing for things such as alterations in health, lumps and bumps and asymmetry. We're also looking for things that are more subjective, such as whether the patient's affect matches their mood and the situation.
And lastly, when we are talking about assessing the head and face, I want you to remember that we can also do some cranial nerve assessments here, and we will talk about that more in depth in the cranial nerve section. However, what we would be assessing in this case would be cranial nerves 5 and 7, which is trigeminal and facial, respectively. So trigeminal, remember tri-, meaning three. We have three branches of the trigeminal nerve that innervate the face. And then, of course, the facial nerve as well. So we're going to be looking at assessing those when we are specifically assessing the head and face.
All right. That is it for assessing the head and face. Pretty basic introduction here to some assessment concepts. However, we will be getting more in depth with the nitty-gritty assessment details going forward, so I do hope you'll join me there. I don't have any quiz questions for you in this video, just because it was such an introductory review. However, be sure to always stay until the end to test your knowledge with our quiz questions when they apply. All right. Thanks so much and happy studying.
