Exploring trends in vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy over two decades

A presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Denver, Colorado (3–7 May) has outlined how advancements in diabetes care have reduced the number of patients who progress to vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University highlighted that despite numerous advances in systemic diabetes care, before their research little was known about the effect of these developments on the risk of patients developing diabetic retinal disease and vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy.

To examine this question, researchers used data from private medical insurers and Medicare Advantage plans to follow 4,212,578 patients with diabetes between 2002 and 2022.

During this time period, 234,734 patients progressed to diabetic retinal disease and 72,508 progressed to vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy. Within this group, 46,230 had diabetic macular oedema and 32,107 had proliferative diabetic retinopathy.

The researchers determined that while there was not a drop in the proportion of patients who developed diabetic retinal disease over the study period, there was a decrease in the proportion of patients who progressed to vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy.

“Advancements in systemic diabetes mellitus care have not translated to demonstrably better prevention of diabetic retinal disease but do seem to have had a tremendous impact on the risk for progressing to vision-threatening forms of the disease,” the authors highlighted.