Join us and learn more about diabetic eye disease. Health Train Express is pleased to be a sponsor as well as a proponent of managing diabetic eye disease.
The progress in treatment of early diabetic retinopathy has improved immeasurably.
A key component for diabetics is to monitor your blood sugars. An annual eye examination or an annual fundus photo of the retina will often find undiagnosed diabetic retinopathy. This can be accomplished by your regular vision provider, optometrist or ophthalmologist. An annual fundus screening using photography provides an excellent means for screening and it provides a permanent record for comparison from year to year. Often the earliest changes from diabetic retinopathy are not symptomatic. Diabetics who experience blurring of vision may have the earliest form of macular edema. Any diabetic who has vision problems or changes in vision should be examined immediately.
The treatment of late diabetic retinopathy (proliferative) has evolved from laser photocoagulatioin to medical drug therapy using intraocular inhibitors of new vessel growth (Avastin). This new treatment minimizes retinal damage and often restores lost vision.
The NEHEP provides an excellent presentation, which was featured on 'Facetime'. In this video Dr Emily Chu a prominent eye research scientist at the National Eye Institute..
The progress has been amazing. When I began my ophthalmology practice in 1975 most patients with proliferative diabetes were blind within five years. It was very disheartening.
Today there is no reasnn why anyone with diabetes should go blind from diabetes.
Sam Omar,,M.D. a fellow ophthalmologist has this to say,
" During my training at UCLA in 1997 I was speaking to one of my mentors Dr Straatsma. I was particularly excited one day because I had assisted the retina fellow in repairing a detachment for a patient. My mentor had told me when he was in training in the late sixties he had attempted to surgical reattachment repair for a detached retina and was unsuccessful in three out of three patients. Those patients all went on to becoming permanently blind. Fast forward - 2015 the technology has improved so much in my short life span of Ophthalmology over the past 20 years. The first picture shows a retina specifically the central retina detached with fluid floating underneath it that's the black in the lower part of the picture. The next picture shows the retina completely reattached so perfectly that the organization of the photoreceptors and the retinal pigment epithelial cells is entirely intact. There is normal organization of the retinal layers and the retina is set up perfectly to heal and function properly. This repair was done by a particularly skillful surgeon. Technology is everywhere and I even used it to dictate this Facebook post with no mistakes in all of the above technical terms."
(28) National Eye Health Education Program (NEHEP)
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