Diabetes can really affect your vision health as it can affect the retinal blood vessels. So it can make the capillary leaky, or it can also block the capillary. When those capillaries end up being leaky, then edema happens in the retina. It can really lower your central vision. You have fluid in the retina that’s not supposed to be there, and also it seems like you’re looking through water because you literally are.

If we can see diabetic people before they have substantial retinal damage, we can protect against vision loss in 95 percent of people. So it’s in the patient’s best interest to come and have their eyes analyzed to make sure that we can examine them and also treat them prior to their eyes deteriorating and really get serious problems with their eyes.

We have three therapies for diabetic retinopathy.

The initial one is laser; there are a couple various sort of laser that we can utilize.

The second is we can infuse a medication straight in the eye which really assists in treating diabetic patients macular edema and also new blood vessels because of diabetic issues.

The third thing is, if we need to, an individual might have a vitrectomy– or a surgical elimination of the blood in the vitreous if they have advanced diabetic retinopathy, but many patients never ever require that retinal surgical procedure for diabetes mellitus.

If we can, we should always try to do an injection or a laser treatment on the very same day that we detect the issue. That may produce a little bit longer waiting time, however, if we can see them, detect them, and treat them in the exact same day, it’s a little easier for them to go back to their homes and afterwards recognize they don’t require to see me for several months.