Diabetic Eye Exam

Protect Your Vision with Regular Diabetic Eye Care

Diabetes can affect more than your blood sugar—it can also have a significant impact on your eye health. Over time, elevated blood sugar can damage the small blood vessels in the retina, increasing the risk of diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema, as well as other eye conditions such as cataracts and glaucoma.

One of the most important things you can do to protect your vision is to have regular comprehensive diabetic eye exams.

Why Are Diabetic Eye Exams Important?

Diabetic eye disease can develop without noticeable symptoms in its early stages. You may have clear vision and still have changes occurring in the retina. Regular eye examinations allow your optometrist to identify these changes early, when monitoring and treatment can be most effective.

The American Diabetes Association recommends that people with type 2 diabetes receive an initial comprehensive dilated eye examination at the time of diagnosis. Adults with type 1 diabetes should generally have their first examination within five years after the onset of diabetes. Follow-up frequency depends on your individual findings and risk factors. (DOI)

What Do We Look For?

During a diabetic eye examination, your doctor carefully evaluates the health of your eyes for signs of:

• Diabetic retinopathy

• Diabetic macular edema

• Retinal bleeding or leaking blood vessels

• Changes to the macula

• Cataracts

• Glaucoma

• Other retinal or optic nerve abnormalities

Depending on your individual needs, your examination may include pupil dilation, retinal imaging, optical coherence tomography (OCT), eye pressure testing, visual acuity testing, and other advanced diagnostic testing. (National Eye Institute)

What Is Diabetic Retinopathy?

Diabetic retinopathy occurs when diabetes damages the blood vessels within the retina—the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. In its early stages, diabetic retinopathy may cause no symptoms. As the condition progresses, patients may experience blurry vision, floaters, dark areas in their vision, or vision loss. (National Eye Institute)

Early detection is essential. When diabetic eye disease is identified promptly, appropriate monitoring, management, and referral for treatment can help protect your vision.

Your Eye Health Is Part of Your Diabetes Care

Your eyes can provide valuable information about how diabetes is affecting your body. Routine diabetic eye examinations allow us to monitor changes over time and work alongside your primary care physician, endocrinologist, or other healthcare providers as part of your overall diabetes management.

Even if your vision seems perfectly clear, don’t wait for symptoms to appear.

ERG:

At our practice, we believe protecting your vision means looking beyond how clearly you can see today. Electroretinography, commonly called ERG, is an advanced diagnostic test that allows us to objectively evaluate how well the light-sensitive cells of your retina are functioning.

The retina is the delicate tissue at the back of your eye responsible for detecting light and sending visual information to your brain. Certain eye and systemic conditions can affect retinal function, sometimes before a patient notices significant changes in vision.

ERG testing measures the retina’s electrical response when it is stimulated by light. This provides your eye doctor with additional information about retinal function that cannot always be obtained from a standard eye examination or retinal photograph alone.

ERG Testing for Patients with Diabetes

Diabetes can affect the retina and lead to diabetic retinopathy, one of the most important vision-related complications of diabetes.

Diabetic eye disease is commonly recognized by visible changes to the retinal blood vessels. However, research has also demonstrated that functional changes within the neural retina can occur in people with diabetes, including some patients who do not yet have clinically visible vascular abnormalities.

ERG testing evaluates retinal function and may provide additional objective information about how diabetes is affecting the retina.

Depending on the type of ERG technology used, testing may help your doctor:

Evaluate retinal function in patients with diabetes

• Identify abnormal retinal responses

• Assess functional changes associated with diabetic retinal disease

• Establish a baseline that may be useful for comparison with future testing

• Add functional information to findings from your comprehensive eye examination and retinal imaging