As the number of patients with diabetes worldwide continues to skyrocket, Australia’s current population of 24.6 million people is not immune. In fact, 1.1 million individuals have diabetes. As diabetes increases so does the prevalence of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) making it the leading cause of visual impairment and preventable blindness in working age people in Australia1.
In general, most individuals are not aware how risky DR is to sight loss, therefore it is critical for them to be educated on the risks. Even if a patient is asymptomatic, they may have early non-proliferative stages of DR which typically shows progressive vascular changes within the retina which usually occurs before any change to vision. Once disease reaches the proliferative stage, vision loss can occur rapidly and can be permanent. Key symptoms of proliferative DR include new abnormal blood vessels on the retinal surface, these new blood vessels are weak and may bleed causing retinal damage or lead to vitreous hemorrhage; this may also be associated with the formation of fibrous scar tissue and can cause retinal detachments.
optomap® ultra-widefield (UWF™) retinal imaging assists eyecare professionals detect, manage, and treat the diseases associated with diabetes. In Australia, optomap UWF imaging provides a cornerstone …
The Daytona from Optos captures 200° or 82 percent of the retina in a single ultra-widefield (UWF™) optomap® image in less than half a second. The built-in eye-steering technology allows non-mydriatic, visualization and imaging of all quadrants beyond the standard 200° view,1 which can make it a valuable technology in early peripheral pathology detection, timely decision-making and, ultimately, sight preservation.
Dr. Nicole Kish has been using the Daytona in her Visionworks practice (Norman, OK) for more than a year now and has seen the value of its integration into the practice workflow protocols. With the full support of an Optos account manager, Dr. Kish has been able to incorporate her entire staff into the pre-testing process, which, in turn, reduces clinical “chair time” and increases the time spent talking with patients.2 According to Dr. Kish UWF imaging has supported her ability to identify early peripheral changes in patients suspected of having undiagnosed diabetes.
The educational value of the optomap system was a big selling point for Dr. Kish. She has been able to educate large numbers of patients about their eye conditions, providing them with “…a level of education and images of their own eyes they’ve never seen.”
According to Dr. …
Diabetic eye disease is a leading cause of blindness and vision loss,1 and, according to the World Health Organization, the incidence of diabetes worldwide is escalating.2 It is estimated that by the year 2035, the number of people worldwide with diabetes will have soared to almost 600 million.3 The National Eye Institute (NEI) reports that there are another 86 million American adults who have pre-diabetes.
Diabetic eye disease describes a group of eye conditions that include diabetic retinopathy (DR), glaucoma, diabetic macular edema and cataracts. DR is often reported as the most common form of diabetic eye disease. It is a serious complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), afflicting one third of all people with the disease, and it is the leading cause of blindness among the working population in the world.4
In its report, “Diabetic Eye Disease Projected to Increase Among U.S. Population,” the NEI states that there are currently 7.7 million people ages 40 and older who have DR, and this number is expected to increase to around 11 million by the year 2030. With advances in technology and medicine, adequate management and regular eye examinations, sight loss associated with diabetes may be prevented in 98 percent of …