Treatments

Diabetic Clinic

Diabetic eye disease is the set of visual complications of diabetes. Visual loss occurs when the presence of diabetic eye disease is severe enough to block the visual pathway (diabetic cataract, vitreous haemorrhage, preretinal haemorrhage) or, to distort and destroy the visual structures at the back of the eye (rods, cones, macula, retinal blood vessels and layers).

Diabetic eye disease is a major cause of legal blindness in working aged people. The incidence of diabetic eye disease is primarily related to adequacy of blood sugar control and duration of diabetes. After 15 years of diabetes, most will have some signs of diabetic eye disease, most of which is asymptomatic.

Very few of all diabetics suffer significant visual loss. Of those that do, the loss was often preventable and is irreversible.

The presence of diabetic changes within the eye (small retinal haemorrhages, leakages and swellings, growth of abnormal vessels) may go completely unnoticed until suddenly, visual loss occurs from an extension of well established diabetic changes. Reversing the visual loss thus entails treating the much more extensive diabetic processes.