If you are experiencing any sort of eye irritation, pain, or redness and then go to your PCP or urgent care and they do not look at your eyes with a slit lamp biomicroscope and instead just call it "pink eye" and Rx antibiotic eyedrops with no follow-up, I'd recommend a second opinion especially if no improvement within a few days. Without this instrument, there is actually no way to tell if your eye pain/redness is due to an acute angle closure glaucoma attack (rare, but can cause permanent vision loss rapidly) versus a corneal ulcer (which also can cause vision loss and is fairly common in contact lens wearers especially if the contacts are being slept in/overworn) versus iritis (which sometimes may be the first sign of more serious systemic disease) versus a tiny piece of maybe wood or metal lodged in the cornea. Or something else. Without looking with this instrument, there's really no way to know and it’s just a guess. In our clinic, we are almost always able to see ocular emergencies same-day.
