Diabetic retinopathy (RD) is a complication of chronic diabetes mellitus. It is the leading cause of blindness in adults between 20 and 74 years, in industrialized countries.
With the correct treatment of retinopathy the blindness of an 50 could be reduced to an 5%. The 33% of patients with diabetic retinopathy have never gone to the ophthalmologist. It is estimated that there are about 120 million diabetics in the world. You have to make an effort to get good information and training from both the patients and the different professionals who are responsible for their care.Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease caused by a disorder in the formation of insulin or by a defect in the cellular uptake of glucose, so hyperglycemia (increased blood sugar) occurs, which will lead to alterations in different organs, such as the kidney, heart or eyes.
The knowledge of risk factors is the basis of the prevention of ocular complications. These can be genetic and hereditary factors, time of evolution of diabetes, poor metabolic control, associated hypertension, kidney disease, puberty and pregnancy.
What type of diabetes eye disorders exist?
There are two types of retinal alteration in diabetes that can lead to blindness and are macular edema (accumulation of fluid and lipids in the central part of the retina) and proliferative DR (which produces intraocular hemorrhages, retinal detachments and glaucoma neovascular).
Diabetic retinopathy can only be prevented with an early diagnosis, which is performed by an ophthalmologist within a routine examination, in which it is recommended to dilate the pupil, although there are other tests that can help with diagnosis and treatment, such as fluorescein angiography ( injecting a dye into a vein of the arm), ocular ultrasound or OCT (optical coherence tomography).
What is the treatment of diabetic retinopathy?
Regarding the treatment of retinopathy, it will depend on the degree of affectation that each patient has, being of crucial importance the good control of the metabolic state, by the team that takes care of their diabetes. The therapeutic modalities, once the DR is established are intravitreal injections (antiangiogenic and corticosteroids), for diabetic macular edema, LASER and intraocular surgery (vitrectomy), which in many patients must be performed several times, until achieving control of your eye complications. In the Ophthalmological Clinic Gran Canaria We are specialists in this type of pathology associated with diabetes.
