Diabetic Retinopathy

Diabetes can affect sight

If you have diabetes mellitus, your body does not use and store sugar properly. Diabetes can cause high blood-sugar levels, excessive thirst and urination. It can also cause changes in the body's blood vessels, the veins and arteries that carry blood throughout your body. Because diabetes affects your body in these ways, it can affect vision by causing cataracts, glaucoma and, most importantly, damage to blood vessels inside the eye.

What are the symptoms of diabetic retinopathy?

There are usually no symptoms of background retinopathy, although gradual blurring of vision may occur if macular edema is present. You may never notice changes in your vision. A medical examination is the only way to find changes inside your eye. When bleeding occurs, your sight may become hazy, spotty or even disappear altogether. While there is no pain, proliferative retinopathy is a severe form of the disease and requires immediate medical attention. Pregnancy and high blood pressure may aggravate diabetic retinopathy.

What is diabetic retinopathy?

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that is caused by changes in the blood vessels of the eye. The retina is a nerve layer at the back of the eye that senses light and helps to send images to your brain. When blood vessels in the retina are damaged, they may leak fluid or blood, and grow fragile, brush-like branches and scar tissue. This can blur or distort the images that the retina sends to the brain. Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of new blindness among adults in the United States. People with untreated diabetes are said to be 25 times more at risk for blindness than the general population. The longer a person has diabetes, the more the risk of developing diabetic retinopathy increases. About 80% of the people who have had diabetes for at least 15 years have some blood vessel damage to their retina. People with Type I, or juvenile diabetes are more likely to develop diabetic retinopathy at a younger age. If you have diabetes, it's important to know that today, with improved methods of diagnosis and treatment, only a small percentage of people who develop retinopathy have serious vision problems.