Diabetic Macular Edema

Diabetic Macular Edema Can Destroy Your Eyesight

Diabetes is a condition that is characterized by having too much sugar in the body. This can damage the tiny vessels in the eye or even block them completely. Sometimes, there are small bulges that ooze fluid or blood into the central retina, causing a condition known as diabetic macular edema. It is a leading cause of new blindness and could take months before being evident and causing loss of vision. Diabetic macular edema is a result of a lack of proper glucose control, which accelerates the disease.

There is an increased risk for diabetic macular edema, due to poor glucose control over time. The patient avoids this by maintaining a healthy diet, exercise and using insulin. The patients living with diabetes for a prolonged time have an increased risk. A patient needs to be sure that they check on their blood glucose regularly to avoid the increased risk of eye disease. Fluid retention, kidney disease and high-fat levels are potential aggravators’ of the eye condition.

An individual may not know how to differentiate this disease from similar eye ailments. Therefore, always visit your eye care professional. However, the notable symptoms to watch out for are, colors looking washed out, or images are blurry or wavy. One needs to be particularly cautious if they have received a diagnosis of diabetes, high blood pressure in the recent past.

Your ophthalmologist will need to do several eyes examinations to provide a diagnosis. He will start the visual acuity test to test how well you can see at several distances. A dilated eye exam follows to look for damaged or leaking eye vessels. If diabetic macular edema is detected, then the eye specialist will perform a fluorescein angiogram (FA) or an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to verify the presence of the disease or diabetic macular edema.

To curb the progress of this disease, visit your eye specialist regularly for eye checkups.