In general medicine, diabetes mellitus appears to be a risk factor for almost everything, including cardiovascular disease, renal failure, neoplasms and neuropathies. Diabetes is a massive healthcare issue in the US: 25.8 million Americans are diabetic. In ophthalmology, it’s a major risk factor for the development of cataracts, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, and it’s the leading cause of new blindness of people aged 20 to 74 years in the USA – diabetic retinopathy alone currently afflicts 7.7 million US citizens.
Understandably, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) is urging patients with diabetes to take action to preserve their vision. They recommend that patients with diabetes should do the following:
- Get a comprehensive dilated eye examination from their ophthalmologist once a year,
- Maintain close-to-normal blood glucose levels
- Maintain healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels
- Quit smoking
- Exercise regularly
The first point is the most important for retaining vision. Ophthalmologists are no strangers to diabetes, making the first diagnosis of the disease in almost half of all cases. In performing fundus imaging, eye care specialists can spot the early stages of diabetes-related damage to the retinal vasculature, commonly before any other symptoms of diabetes are seen. And it’s the power of this humble imaging technique that makes tracking the progression of diabetes-related ocular diseases easy, allowing timely interventions to save sight… but only if patients present to the clinic for assessment. John Kitchens, a retina specialist and AAO clinical spokesperson, remarked that, “Far too frequently patients with diabetes come to me when it’s too late. If only they had acted sooner and had a simple dilated eye exam each year, we could have intervened and saved their vision.”
