What are typical risk factors?
Typical risk factors for diabetic retinopathy are, as the name suggests, factors that are particularly prevalent in diabetics.
- This includes in particular a badly adjusted and over a long period of time increased blood sugar. The sugar is deposited as large molecules in the walls of the blood vessels.
This leads to damage, particularly of the small vessels, a so-called microangiopathy, which mainly affects the retina.
- Other risks for the development of diabetic retinopathy are high blood pressure (hypertension), smoking, elevated blood lipid levels and hormonal changes during pregnancy.
Diabetic retinopathy remains without symptoms for a long time and is therefore recognized by the patient only very late. In most cases, the disease is discovered by ophthalmologic examinations during diabetic check-ups as a random finding.
- The first symptoms of both forms of retinopathy can be visual deterioration, blurred vision or vitreous hemorrhages.
- Retinopathy is a chronic and incurable disease that inevitably leads to blindness if treated badly or too late, which results in an enormous limitation in everyday life.The dead nerve cells in the retina are destroyed and cannot be regenerated.
- In addition, with increasing retinopathy, numerous complications can occur, such as increased intraocular pressure and retinal detachment.
