Diabetic Retinopathy Barometer Study: relevant issues and perspectives
Currently, diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness among working age population worldwide as the prevalence of diabetes rises. Despite significant progress in our un-derstanding of DR pathogenesis, treatment modalities are still limited. Therefore, adequate pre-vention is a milestone for ocular health in diabetes. Regular eye examinations are required, how-ever, coverage of diabetes screening is low due to the numerous challenges. According to the Diabetic Retinopathy Barometer Study, one-third of patients are not aware of ocular complica-tions of diabetes while one-fifth of patients do not undergo eye examinations after diagnosis of diabetes. Two-third of ophthalmologists has reported that most patients with diabetes are pre-sented to eye doctor with late DR. Reminding systems, patient education, available eye care ser-vices, development of telemedicine and artificial intelligence technologies to analyze fundus im-ages are required to improve patient compliance with regular eye examinations. Thus, launching of DR screening program in UK has required significant financial investment, novel equipment, personnel training, development of screening pathway and patient notification system. As a re-sult, for the first time in over 50 years DR is no longer the leading cause of blindness in adults of working age. Recent findings on the efficacy of anti-VEGF therapy for diabetic eye are other reasons for strict compliance with the intervals between eye examina-tions to start the treatment early.