What should you know about stomach pain and eye swelling?

Eye swelling can follow allergy, irritation, infection, fluid retention, or a problem around the eye. Stomach pain may come from reflux, gastritis, food poisoning, gastroenteritis, or gallstones. Coeliac disease and Crohn's disease can affect digestion and may have symptoms beyond the gut, but these symptoms alone do not identify a diagnosis. The timing matters: symptoms beginning after a new food or medicine raise different concerns from pain and swelling developing separately over several days.

Write down when each symptom began, recent foods, medicines, skin products, insect exposure, fever, bowel changes, and whether one or both eyes are affected. Avoid rubbing the eye and stop a suspected new cosmetic product. Do not use someone else's eye drops or take leftover antibiotics. A clinician can examine the abdomen and eye and decide whether testing or treatment is needed.

Call emergency services for swelling of the lips, tongue, or throat, breathing difficulty, faintness, or rapidly spreading hives. Seek urgent eye care for vision change, severe eye pain, pain with eye movement, marked redness, or fever. Severe abdominal pain, repeated vomiting, a rigid abdomen, blood in vomit or stool, or collapse also requires emergency assessment.

Ask whether the eye and abdominal symptoms could share a cause, whether an allergy or infection is suspected, what examinations are needed, and which medicines are safe. Bring packaging for any new medicine, supplement, food, or cosmetic product.