When to do Retinopathy screening in a patient with Diabetic Neuropathy?
(A) Immediately# DIABETIC RETINOPATHY is a important cause of avoidable blindness in India. Treatment interventions at early stages of diabetic retinopathy can reduce burden of blindness due to diabetic retinopathy. With the available cost-effective methods of early screening, appropriate strategies/models need to be developed.> Diabetic retinopathy has no early warning signs.> Macular edema, which can cause rapid vision loss, may not have any warning signs for some time. A person with macular edema is likely to have blurred vision, making it hard to do things like read or drive and in some cases, the vision will get better or worse during the day.> Diagnosis of Diabetic retinopathy is detected during an eye examination that includes: Visual acuity test: This test uses an eye chart to measure how well a person sees at various distances (i.e., visual acuity). Pupil dilation: The eye care professional places drops into the eye to dilate the pupil. This allows him or her to see more of the retina and look for signs of diabetic retinopathy. After the examination, close-up vision may remain blurred for several hours. Ophthalmoscopy:(1) Looks through a slit lamp biomicroscope with a special magnifying lens that provides a narrow view of the retina, or(2) Wearing a headset (indirect ophthalmoscope) with a bright light, looks through a special magnifying glass and gains a wide view of the retina. Hand-held ophthalmoscopy is insufficient to rule out significant and treatable diabetic retinopathy. Fundus photography generally captures considerably larger areas of the fundus, and has the advantage of photo documentation for future reference, as well as availing the image to be examined by a specialist at another location and/or time. Fundus Fluorescein angiography (FFA): This is an imaging technique which relies on the circulation of Fluorescein dye to show staining, leakage, or non-perfusion of the retinal and choroidal vasculature. Optical coherence tomography (OCT): This is an optical imaging modality based upon interference, and analogous to ultra- sound. It produces cross-sectional images of the retina (B-scans) which can be used to measure the thickness of the retina.
Immediately
After 4 weeks
After 4 months
After 1 year
Miscellaneous