How Diabetic Retinopathy Can Cause Blindness
It is a little-known fact that diabetes is one of the leading causes of blindness in the world. This is especially true among the working age population. The reason is that the risk of developing sight-threatening eye disease increases significantly after living with diabetes for 20 years.
Diabetic Retinopathy damages the small blood vessels inside the retina at the back of the eye — the part that detects light and sends signals to the brain through the optic nerve. The retina is a light-sensitive thin layer of tissue located near the optic nerve. It converts light into electrical signals, which are transmitted to the brain. The brain then turns them into the images you see.
The retina needs a constant supply of blood, which it receives through a network of tiny blood vessels. If the blood sugar levels are too high over a period of time, it can cause damage to the blood vessels leading to diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy commonly affects both eyes and can lead to vision loss if it is not treated.
“I woke up blind…”
Meet Neill Hansell, an Australian who went to bed one night and woke up blind the next day. His video, provided by Sight For All with special thanks to Dr. James Muecke, is particularly powerful and moving.
Another striking example is Leonie Watson who lost her eye sight in her 20s after ignoring doctors’ advice about her diabetes for years. “I became blind over the course of 12 months from late 1999 to the end of 2000. It was mostly my fault” she said in an interview with the BBC in 2015.
During her teenage years, Leonie stopped monitoring her blood sugar levels, skipped insulin injections and ignored her annual doctor’s visits. In the interview she describes how she’s dealt with the vision loss.
Millions are going blind unnecessarily
Anyone with diabetes can get diabetic retinopathy — including people with Type 1, Type 2, and gestational diabetes. It is estimated that there are 149 million people worldwide with diabetic retinopathy and of those, around 47 million with sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy.
These dramatic numbers are expected to exceed 245 million people with diabetic retinopathy and 77 million with sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy by 2045.
Know your risk of diabetic eye disease
Click here to download the RetinaRisk app now!
Often there are no symptoms
The early stages of diabetic retinopathy are often asymptomatic. Some people notice changes in their vision, like trouble reading or seeing faraway objects. In later stages of the disease, blood vessels in the retina start to bleed into the vitreous, leading to dark, floating spots or streaks appearing.
Sometimes, the spots clear up on their own but it’s important to get treatment right away as without treatment, the bleeding can happen again and get worse.
Diabetes damages blood vessels all over the body. Over time, too much sugar in the blood can lead to the blockage of the tiny blood vessels that nourish the retina, cutting off its blood supply. As a result, the eye attempts to grow new blood vessels, but these new blood vessels don’t develop properly and can leak easily.
Early detection is the key
Given that the majority of vision impairment from diabetic retinopathy is avoidable through early detection and timely treatment, periodic screening among individuals with diabetes has long been endorsed by the World Health Organization and others. Eye doctors can check for diabetic retinopathy as part of a dilated eye exam.
The exam is simple and painless — your doctor will give you some eye drops to dilate your pupil and then check your eyes for diabetic retinopathy and other eye problems. Timely treatment of sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy with laser or other interventions is highly effective in preventing vision impairment or blindness.
Calculate your risk of diabetic retinopathy with the RetinaRisk app
The RetinaRisk app is a unique and revolutionary tool that can be instrumental in preventing diabetic retinopathy. The app empowers people with diabetes to assess and monitor their individualized risk of developing sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy and seek early diagnosis and timely treatment.
The app´s easy-to-visualize “gauge” displays the individualized risk of each patient in green, amber and red. It also indicates which are the key risk factors for each risk calculation. The app vividly demonstrates how improvement of the modifiable risk factors (blood sugar and blood pressure), could significantly lower the user´s risk of potentially blinding diabetic eye disease and expensive interventions.
The RetinaRisk app offers extensive guidelines and educational material on good diabetes care, diabetic retinopathy and how to prevent vision loss. Users can set goals as regards blood sugar and blood pressure. They can track progress of the risk of diabetic eye disease. The app also allows the user to share the results with healthcare providers.
Logging previous and upcoming eye screening appointments and receiving reminders, is another valuable feature. This will help to ensure that people have their eyes checked regularly.
Conclusion
It’s important to raise awareness about diabetic retinopathy and how it can be prevented with early detection and timely treatment. Using tools like the RetinaRisk app can be a powerful way to empower people living with diabetes to better understand their condition. Together, we will be able to eliminate preventable blindness due to diabetes.
