Diabetic Retinopathy and Regular Eye Exams

Featuring Amit Gupta, MD, FACS, Ophthalmologist

Duration: 1 minute, 29 seconds

Regular eye exams are, for a diabetic, a very necessary thing. Because diabetes can cause a lot of damage to the eyes, and it will not be perceived by the patient themselves. The person who has diabetes may have 20/20 vision, feel healthy, their eyes work well, they can see in the dark, they can drive easily, watch TV, but they don’t realize that they have ongoing vision problems that are starting. And the only way to find them out is by going to your eye doctor.

You need at least a regular eye exam once a year, more often if there’s some damage in the back of the eye. The exam can consist of photography of the back of the eye, or scans with optical coherence tomography.

The photography allows connection between what was done last year and the year before to see if there was any progression of disease, see how fast it’s progressing. The OCT, the optical coherence tomography, which is also a non-invasive test, can allow measuring if there’s swelling in the back of the eye that is very hard to see in either photograph or by examination.

With these tools, your doctor can monitor your eyes, in addition to of course eye exams, and help you try to prevent problems before they become serious.

If you want more information on this, the best place is: see your eye doctor.

Presenter: Dr. Amit Gupta, Ophthalmologist, Scarborough, ON

Local Practitioners: Ophthalmologist