Visual complications are the most dangerous for diabetics and focus on two: macular edema and diabetic retinopathy.Around a third of them suffer retinal problems.The ophthalmologist must be a regular companion in the control of this disease.
The debates "Health, Knowledge and Welfare Breakfasts", which Efesalud organizes with the collaboration of Novartis, deepens, from Barcelona, in these complications with the help of Dr. Laura Sarals, head of the ophthalmology service of the General Hospital of Catalonia;and Dr. Santiago Abengoechea, surgeon of Vitreorretina of the Barraquer Ophthalmology Center.
Diabetes and eyes
Dr. Sararols, what effects does diabetes have on health?
Dr. Laura Sarans: It is important that people know and understand that diabetes is a silent disease, does not hurt, and therefore does not usually arouse great concern in those affected.And, years after not having pain or symptoms, its consequences are diagnosed, such as loss of vision, which can be very severe.
It is an increasingly frequent disease in which bad life habits influence, nothing healthy.
Doctor Santiago Abengoechea, what are the main complications of a diabetic in your visual health?
Doctor Santiago Abengoechea: The main visual complication is in the retina.There is a frequent decrease in vision in the diabetic patient;The primordial, the macular edema, a flooding that entails the storage of fluid in the central part of the retina, the macula, causing a notable decrease in visual acuity and generating blurred vision, undulating, ultimately, a very bad vision quality.
What can a diabetic do to avoid, prevent or control these visual health risks?
Dr. Abengoechea: The first thing you should do is control your base disease well.Visual alterations are a complication, but disease is diabetes, not a diabetic retinopathy.
If the patient is not aware that the base disease has to be controlled well, things will go wrong.Sometimes patients go to the ophthalmologist with vision decreases that are already severe, and aspire to solve the problem.
In this situation, I tell you that we are a team and that they have to collaborate and put on their part through a strict control of sugar and other risk factors.And we will take care of your retina.
Never say no to the ophthalmologist
Dr. Sararols: Diabetes is a systemic disease, affects all the vessels of the body, and when altering affect the kidney, brain and generally, and changes occur in the retina.
We suggest annual reviews of the diabetic patient.Being a vascular disease, in those vessels that are like tubes, holes appear and liquid begins to come out and the macular edema is formed;But in addition, those altered vessels have bleeding and can cause loss of vision, even need surgery to maintain some vision.
Many times the patient is diagnosed when he has loss of vision, and he has never gone to the doctor, an analytical has never been done, because he was well and did not know that he was diabetic.
Diabetes has a prevalence of 15%, are patients aware of the risk of eye complications?
Dr. Sararols: You can reach blindness quickly, in two or three years.The problem is that when you find it well, you have a hard time looking in the long term, and being aware that a bad performance and non -existent control are very harmful.You have to act before: lose weight, take the medication, walk every day and do the right controls, and this every day of your life, and it is not easy.
Dr. Abengoechea: It is a disease that not only shortensLife, but generates very poor quality of life, and this should know the patient.Sometimes, this scares more than shortening life.The patient must be sensitized so that sugar control is very strict.
And it is complex to maintain this control.You have to always behave, every day, in food, with chronic treatments, strict diet, Spartan discipline, daily exercise.
Why are patients not aware of the severity of diabetes?
What fails so that diabetes does not act as with cancer or heart disease?
Dr. Sararols: On the one hand there is a lack of information, but it is that the information is internalized as each one is interested in and, in addition, the styles and ways of living do not induce to take care of nutrition or exercise: each time we eat less healthy, increase obesity, increase diabetes ...
But, doctors, if there is a tendency to healthy lifestyles, or not?
Dr. Abengoechea: messages, but another thing is that the patient assumes them.And another thing is that the patient modifies their eating habits.It is one thing to quit, but leave the industrial pastries, and go to the fruit is not simple.
Do we need the patient to take responsibility for their illness?
Dr. Abengoechea: Many patients do not admit that their loss of vision is irreparable.They believe that the lost view can be recovered, and it is not so.This message must reach the population, that this loss of vision is not recoverable.This impacts the patient.We intend to stabilize or improve, but not regain the lost vision.
Dr. Sararols: Diabetics should visit the Endocrine, the Podiatry, the Specialists of Kidney and Heart;And among so many tasks, sometimes the control of the ophthalmologist is abandoned, because the eyes see well and do not hurt.And it is a mistake.We must assume that diabetes is a hard disease that requires discipline.
Dr. Abengoechea: The hopeful message is clear, with the new treatments, with intra vitreous injections, the panorama has changed radically in recent years.Before we only had the laser, which had important limitations in macular edema, but today visual acuity is maintained and can increase.And the new drugs, in the study phase, will provide improvements in treatments.
Dr. Sararols: I would tell the patient diagnosed with diabetes to listen to the information of his header and prevention, modify his life habits and fulfill his visits to the ophthalmolgo.Annual Fund control is very important with a retina specialist.
Dr. Abengoechea: One of the main problems is that there are many young patients, from 30 to 40 years old, in work age, with a lifetime ahead, and if they do not take care of them, they can have great limitations.
The debates "Health breakfasts.Knowledge and well -being ”, which have the collaboration of Novartis, will have a new edition on nearby dates, with the aim of providing information to improve the health of society.