Introduction:

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a worldwide epidemic disease, with significant microvascular compromise. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) as well as diabetic macular edema (DME) are currently two of the leading causes of visual impairment and blindness in adults of productive age. Approximately one in three people with DM have diabetic retinopathy (DR), and 1 in 10 have PDR or DME. This study emphasizes in the last one, being the first one with these characteristics in Colombia.

Methods:

This descriptive cross-sectional study includes 1203 patients diagnosed with DM evaluated in the “No more blindness due to diabetes” diabetic retinopathy-screening program of the San Vicente Foundation Hospital in Medellín between 2017 and 2018. The presence of DR and clinical macular edema with the epidemiologic variables were evaluated in a bivariate analysis.

Results:

From the total number of patients with DM screened (1203), 5,4% (65) had DME, 7,7% had DM type 1 and 89,2% had DM type 2, 10,8% had PDR and 73.8% had nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy NPDR. Most of the patients (93,8%) were diagnosed de novo with DR. The median illness time was 14 years with interquartile range (IQR) between 7 and 19,5. The median glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1C) was 8.3% (IQR:7,1-11). Optical coherence tomography (OCT) study was done in 28 out of 65 patients with DME (56 out of 130 eyes with DME), in which 85.7% of patients were confirmed to have DME and the mean central macular thickness was 249 microns (IQR:231-341) (n=48 eyes).

Conclusion:

DM complications were more frequent in patients suffering from DR. The median onset time of DME symptoms was found to be similar to the time of microvascular complications appear; however, it should be considered along with the patient’s metabolic control.

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