80% of people with more than ten years of having diabetes, can develop severe visual problems, even lose sight, specialists point out.
Specialists invite the population to become aware of visual health diseases.Today, in Mexico around 10 million people suffer from diabetes, of which more than 80 % of those who suffer from it, for more than ten years, will have the possibility of developing severe visual problems with high risk to be blind.
In that sense, Dr. Eduardo Corzo Buenrostro, ophthalmologist, general director of Codiabet, Diabetic Ophthalmology Center, expressed “until a few years ago, diabetes was almost synonymous with total and irreversible blindness due to diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma,Today with medical advances and prevention we can avoid the blindness of these patients ”
The diabetic eye can present three main problems: cataract, glaucoma and retina disease, these effects usually appear silently, but if they are diagnosed and treated in a timely manner it is possible to avoid the development of blindness.
Falls are a fairly common cause of poor vision, particularly in the elderly, but their treatment is relatively easy, so it is worth doing and improving their quality of life.
A cataract is an opacity of the internal natural lens of the eye (crystalline).This opacity is progressive until the patient's view completely cloudy, making it impossible to perform daily work.
In this regard, Dr. Corzo commented, "surgery is the only way in which the ophthalmologist can eliminate a cataract and is a procedure that has a great probability of success, more than 90% of cases achieve remarkable visual improvement."
Another of the silent diseases that affect patients with diabetes is the so -called "glaucoma", ocular disease characterized by optical nerve damage, accompanied by progressive loss of peripheral vision (sideways vision) and that can occur with or withoutElevation of intraocular pressure, but that is enough to produce irreversible optical nerve damage.
“Glaucoma can affect anyone but there are people who run the higheA complicated intraocular surgery, ”said the director of Codiabet.
He also added “To obtain a reliable diagnosis, the patient must go with an ophthalmologist who will perform a series of exams that include the measurement of intraocular pressure, the review of the areas where the internal liquid produced by the eye is reabsorbedof the optical nerve and a visual field study, to determine the type of glaucoma that is suffered ”.
Diabetes injures the blood vessels of the retina and can cause them to suffer from leaks or to grow anomalous, causing blurred or distorted images of the images that the retina sends to the brain.Retina's disease or better known as diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes, caused by the deterioration of blood vessels that irrigate the retina.
The risk of developing diabetic retinopathy increases the longer diabetes.
Dr. Eduardo Corzo commented that "about 80% of the people who have suffered from diabetes for 15 years, already have some type of damage to the blood vessels of the retina"
Finally, Dr. Eduardo Corzo said "all people with diabetes" must go to the ophthalmologist from the time of diabetes diagnosis and then every 6 months toMake a specialized review of the eyes.In this way we timely prevent a visual health problem that would affect us in our quality of life ”
Dr. Eduardo Corzo Buenrostro added “the reason for existing of Codiabet, Diabetic Ophthalmology Center is to avoid blindness by diabetes, safeguarding, as much as possible, the good vision of the diabetic patient”