Top 5 Reasons You Need a Diabetic Eye Exam

Your eyes can be harmed through diabetes as it may damage tiny blood vessels at the back of the eye or in the retina. It’s called a diabetic retinopathy, and it can also increase the risk to get glaucoma, as well as additional eye troubles. You might not even know whether your eyes were damaged until it becomes a bad problem. That is why a regular diabetic eye exam is so important. Your eye specialist can detect these conditions early.

There won’t be any symptoms or changes in your vision with diabetic retinopathy in the early stages. Yet, there are numerous potentially destructive problems your eyes that can develop, without causing any distorting or discomfort of your vision.

Cataracts and glaucoma are some examples that mostly occur in older people and much more regularly in patients that have diabetes. Generally, if these conditions are caught in an early stage, it can be treated, otherwise, it will lead to loss of vision or sometimes even cause blindness.

Although, with diabetic retinopathy which is a very serious problem, it will most of the time occur in patients that have Type 1 diabetes. Nonetheless, it’s still possible to develop in any patient that have diabetes.

Diabetic Eye Diseases

Patients with diabetes can develop different diabetic eye diseases including glaucoma and cataracts. Listed here are some of the eye problems a person with diabetics may face.

Diabetic retinopathy

This affects the blood vessels that line your eyes at the back, which is light-sensitive tissues, and it’s called your retina. It’s one of the most general causes among patients that have diabetes, to develop loss of vision, as well as blindness.

DME (Diabetic macular edema)

It causes swelling in the vicinity of your retina that is called macula and is known to be a result of diabetic retinopathy.

Cataracts

This will cloud the lens of your eye. Patients with diabetes even at a young age are two to five times more susceptible to develop cataracts, than people that don’t suffer from diabetes.

Glaucoma

There are several kinds of this disease that might injure the optic nerve of your eye. The optic nerve that connects your eye to your brain is a group of nerve fibers. Some glaucoma types can be connected to elevate the pressure inside your eye, and among adult patients with diabetes, the risk to get glaucoma is almost double.

Reasons why you Need a Diabetic Eye Exam

Several medical complications might arise through diabetes and the amount of damage it can cause to your eyes.

Here are five reasons to contact your eye specialist.

1.    With blurry vision, dark strings, dots or floaters that cloud your vision

2.    Difficulty to focus on empty or dark areas that appear in your vision’s field

3.    When you experience vision fluctuating changes

4.    If you have color visions that alter

5.    In the case of vision loss that is partial or maybe total

Most of the time diabetic retinopathy can affect both of your eyes simultaneously and in the same degree. When you experience problems only with one of your eyes, it won’t mean that it is not because of diabetic retinopathy.

However, it can indicate that you might have some other issue with your eye. Your eye specialist can determine what it is and prescribe a treatment plan that will be appropriate.

Diabetes can increase the chances of developing eye problems over a period of time. It’s very important for patients that have diabetes to go for regular diabetic eye exams no less than one every year or two.

Once it’s been established that a patient already has some eye-related issues, it should be even more regular. The reason for this is simple. So, why it is so extremely important to go for a diabetic eye exam?

Only with timely and regular eye exams can any of the issues be diagnosed and identified in the early stages. The key to an early identified and diagnosed diabetic or any eye-related conditions, is so that you can receive the correct treatment to prevent and ensure that the condition won’t worsen as time goes by.

So, if you suffer from diabetes, you should make sure to schedule an appointment immediately with your eye specialist to go for a diabetic eye exam.