Diabetes

Diabetics are a particularly susceptible risk group for a certain disease or consequential damage to the eye. The disease here is called “diabetic retinopathy“. Since diabetes mellitus is not an acutely occurring disease, but rather a slow, insidious process that ultimately affects virtually all areas of our body, it is not a disease of the eye, but rather of the entire body.

Of course, it also has an impact on the eyes. The real problem for diabetics is the permanently elevated blood sugar levels, which over the years cause damage and pathological changes to the blood vessels throughout the body. In the eye, this means that the small blood vessels of the retina close up over time, so that the retina can no longer be supplied with sufficient blood and nutrients and the extremely sensitive visual receptors die.In addition, the walls of the blood vessels themselves become porous and leak, they leak and the blood can leak into the vitreous body at these points, causing additional damage to the sensitive eye.

The dangerous thing about diabetic retinopathy is also that the affected persons usually hide the rather insidious processes that begin slowly, and even if entire parts of the visual field should already fail, the human brain is still able to cover up these blind spots and fill them up with the information from the second eye. In the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, fluctuations in vision and visual acuity can give a first indication of the pathological processes. If the disease is already more advanced and the damage caused to the visual cells is greater, the vision decreases and the image becomes blurred and distorted (this is called metamorphopsia).

If there is a lot of bleeding in the retina, vision can sometimes be completely lost. Therefore, it is extremely important for diabetics to visit their ophthalmologist for an ophthalmoscopy on a regular basis, i.e. at least once a year. If incipient diabetic retinopathy has already been diagnosed, the controls are more closely knit, usually every six months or even once a quarter. Even if the patient has not yet noticed any symptoms, these ordered check-ups should definitely be taken.