Diabetic Retinopathy

Hi,

I am Dr. Nikhil Nasta from Mumbai. In this video I am going to talk to you about diabetic retinopathy.

Many of us have diabetes or our near and dear ones have diabetes. Diabetes is not a very sweet disease to have, it can affect every part of your body, especially your eyes. Now, eyes are very important without the eyes we really can't see anything and the beauty of life is lost. Diabetes is a silent killer. It affects eyes right from day one, when you are diagnosed you must go and get your eyes checked by an ophthalmologist, who will take multiple pictures, do certain procedures or tests to determine what is the level of your diabetic disease, what is the effect on the eyes.

How diabetes affect the eyes? It causes the blood to become slightly thicker, the blood vessels are like pipes in which it's flowing these pipe becomes very leaky and if it starts leaking there is acceleration of flow, there is an acceleration of blood, some cholesterol deposits all of this accumulated on your retina, the retina is the back layer of the eye, which is like the film of the camera, if this film is dirty the picture you click will also be very hazy, so all of this affect your retina this is earlier diabetic retinopathy and this stage it can be treated with medicines, it can be treated with lasers, it can be treated with some injections to prevent the further spread.

If not detected or treated correctly at this time, the retinopathy will progressed, there will be areas in your retina which will stop getting any blood supply. When you stop blood supply it's like choking it to death, so that part still wants to live, it will get some new blood vessels. Now, this new blood vessels don't have all the functions of the old ones or of the mature ones, these immature blood vessels will be fragile, they will leak, they will leak more blood and cause more damage. This blood, if it stays in the eye for a long time it can pull and tug like a tug of war and detach the entire retina altogether, this happens in late stage diabetec retinopathy or burnt out stage. There can be detachments, there can be bleeding, there can be recurrent problems, you need to take the hold of all this, if you reach that level then surgery is the only choice.

Surgery for this is called is pars plana vitrectomy, the jelly in the eye is called vitreous it's full of sugar this is going to cause more and more damage so we remove that jelly and replace it with some oil or some of the fluids, do lasers, it's a major surgery and it's indicated it stops the damage, stop the progression and whatever little vision we can save, it can be saved over here.

Don't hesitate, please take hold of from diabetic retinopathy, take hold of your life. If you have been diagnosed, ask your diabetic doctor, visit your ophthalmologist. get details, get annual checkups done. In some patients even 3-monthly checkups are not enough, it is very preventable, it is a leading cause of blindness all over the world. You should be aware of what you are suffering from and how you can prevent it.

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Thank you