How does diabetes cause diabetic retinopathy?

Diabetes mellitus (DM) causes abnormal changes in blood sugar (glucose), which your body normally converts into energy for various bodily processes.

Uncontrolled diabetes usually causes high levels of blood sugar (hyperglycemia) to build up in blood vessels, the damage caused by which obstructs or alters blood flow to parts of your body, including your eyes. 

Diabetic Retinopathy

 Diabetic retinopathy is the most serious eye disease in diabetes. Even in this there are no initial symptoms, the patient comes to know about it by retina test. As retinopathy progresses, the eyesight starts decreasing. If the condition worsens, the light may go out completely.

 Apart from diabetes, if the patient is suffering from blood pressure, thyroid, cholesterol, heart or kidney disease, then the risk increases even more. Retinopathy can occur in 20% to 40% of patients with diabetes.

There are two major types of diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes and Type 2 diabetes

In both types of diabetes, increased blood sugar levels increase the risk of developing diabetic retinopathy.

Eye damage occurs when chronically high levels of blood sugar begin to block or damage the blood vessels in the retina of the eye. The retina contains light-sensitive cells (photoreceptors), whichare necessary for good vision.

Symptoms of Diabetic Retinopathy and Other Diabetic Eye Diseases

Symptoms of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and other diabetic eye diseases include:

• fluctuating vision
• Eye floaters and spots
• Scotoma in your field of vision or shadow development
• blurred and/or distorted vision
• corneal disorders such as slow healing of wounds due to friction in the cornea
• double vision
• eye pain
• Myopia problems not related to farsightedness (presbyopia)
• cataracts

During an eye exam, your eye doctor will try to look for diabetic retinopathy and other signs of diabetes-related eye disease. Signs of damage to the retina may include deposits and evidence of swelling, bleeding, or fluid leaking from the blood vessels.

Your eye doctor will take a picture of your retina with a camera or other imaging device and look for obvious signs of damage associated with diabetes. In some cases, he may refer you to a retinal specialist for additional tests and possible treatment.

For conclusive confirmation of disease, you may need to undergo a test called fluorescein angiography. In this test, a dye is injected into the veins in your arm and this dye slowly travels into the blood vessels of the retina, where it is exposed to changes in the blood vessels caused by diabetes and blood leaks in the retina. Identifies.

An often overlooked symptom of diabetic eye disease is nerve damage (neuropathy) affecting the eye muscles that control eye movements. Symptoms may include involuntary eye movements (nystagmus) and double vision.

Symptoms of diabetic eye disease

Due to damage to the retinal blood vessels by high blood sugar levels, fluid or blood may leak out of them. Due to this, in the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, the retina becomes swollen and deposits accumulate.

In later stages, leakage from blood vessels in the clear, jelly-like vitreous of the eye Can cause serious vision problems and eventually lead to blindness.

diabetic macular edema

inflammation of the maculais commonly associated with type 2 diabetes. Macular edema can cause decreased or distorted vision.

Diabetic macular edema (DME) is generally classified into two types:

• Focal, which is microaneurysm or other vascular abnormalities that occur with leaky blood vessels.
• Diffuse, which refers to dilated or swollen small blood vessels (capillaries) within the retina.

Non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR)

This early stage of DR—recognized by deposits in the retina—can occur anytime after a diagnosis of diabetes.

There are often no visual symptoms, but a retinal examination may reveal small dot-and-blot hemorrhages, known as microaneurysms, which refer to a type of dilation of small blood vessels.

In type 1 diabetes, these early symptoms usually do not appear until three to four years after the diagnosis of the disease has passed. In type 2 diabetes, NPDR may also be present at the time of diagnosis.

Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (PDR)

Among diabetic eye diseases, proliferative diabetic retinopathy poses the highest risk of blindness.

The following are the signs of PDR:

• optic nerve and vitreouson and around Development of abnormal blood vessels (neo-vasculature or neovascularization).
• pre-retinal haemorrhageWhich is in the vitreous humor or in front of the retina.
• Ischemia due to decreased or blocked blood flow, as well as a lack of oxygen needed for a healthy retina.

These abnormal blood vessels formed by the process of new vessel formation rupture and leak blood from them into the vitreous humor of the eye. In addition to sudden blindness, more permanent complications include tractional retinal detachment and neovascular glaucoma .

Macular edema can occur with or without NPDR or PDR.

You should be monitored regularly, although you may not need laser treatment until you reach an advanced stage of diabetic eye disease.

NOTE– Our aim is to give you information about diseases, we do not recommend you any kind of medicine, treatment, surgery. We are just a means of providing general information about disease, surgery, treatment and medicines to our viewers for education purpose only. The information provided should not be used for the diagnosis and/or treatment of any disease or medical condition without the guidance of your physician.