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    EYE Problems


    People with diabetes have a greater risk of developing eye problems, including:

    Cataracts

    A cataract is a thickening and clouding of the lens of
    the eye that would otherwise be clear. The lens is the
    part of the eye that helps you focus on what you see
    just like a camera. Cataracts can make a person's vision
    blurry or make it hard to see at night.   Although anyone
    can get cataracts, doctors think that people with
    diabetes are more likely to develop cataracts if they
    have high blood sugar levels over along period of time
    and the condition progresses more rapidly than in
    people without diabetes. If cataracts get in the way of seeing properly, a person can have
    surgery to remove them.

    Retinopathy

    Another eye problem, called diabetic retinopathy (pronounced: reh-tih-nah-puh-thee),
    involves changes in the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. These
    changes happen because of damage or growth problems in the small blood vessels of the
    retina. Usually, changes in the retinal blood vessels don't appear before a person has
    reached puberty and has had diabetes for several years.

    Types of Retinopathy in Diabetes:

              1.   Background retinopathy. Is when the
                    blood vessel damage exists, but there
                    is no vision problem.  It's important to
                    carefully manage your diabetes at this
                    stage to prevent background retinopathy
                    from progressing to more serious eye
                    disease.

             2.   Maculopathy. In maculopathy, the person
                   has developed damage in a critical area
                   called the macula. Because this occurs in
                   an area that is critical to vision, this type
                   of eye problem can significantly reduce vision.

             3.  Proliferative retinopathy. New blood vessels start to grow in the back of the eye.
                  Because retinopathy is a microvascular complication of diabetes, a disease of small
                  vessels, this type of retinopathy develops because of an increasing lack of oxygen
                  to the eye from vascular disease. Vessels in the eye are thinned and occluded and
                  they start to remodel.

    Retinopathy is more likely to become a problem in people with diabetes if they have high
    blood sugar levels over a long period of time, if they have high blood pressure, or if they
    use smoke or chew tobacco.   A person with diabetes may be able to slow or reverse the
    damage caused by retinopathy by improving blood sugar control.  If retinopathy becomes
    more advanced, laser treatment may be needed to help prevent vision loss.

    Glaucoma

    People with diabetes also have a greater chance of getting
    glaucoma. In this disease, pressure builds up inside the eye,
     which can decrease blood flow to the retina and optic nerve
     and damage them. In the most common form of glaucoma,
    there may be no symptoms of this eye problem and a person
     may not lose any vision at all. Not until the disease is very
    advanced that there is significant vision loss. But if it's not
    treated, glaucoma can cause a person to lose vision.

    In the less common form of this eye problem, symptoms can include headaches, eye aches
    or pain, blurred vision, watering eyes, halos around lights, and loss of vision. The risk
    increases as a person gets older and hashad diabetes longer. People with glaucoma take
    medications to lower the pressure inside the eye and sometimes need surgery.
COPYRIGHT 2008-11 ROCK FOR DIABETES  A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
    DIABETES COMPLICATIONS
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