Diabetes

Diabetes is a complex disorder that involves nearly every part of the human body. The eye doctors at Iowa EyeCare have a comprehensive understanding of diabetes and how it affects the eyes.

Diabetes is a disease of uncontrolled sugar, or glucose, levels in the blood. Diabetes causes blood and its contents to leak out of small vessels in all parts of the body, including the eye. When this happens, vision is adversely affected and it is termed diabetic retinopathy.

Two major forms of diabetic retinopathy exist: non-proliferative and the more severe proliferative diabetic retinopathy. New blood vessel growth, called neovascularization, is the clinical finding that separates these two types of diabetic eye disease. The new vessels associated with proliferative disease are of grave concern because they indicate severe, long-standing eye disease and have a great potential to cause vision damage.

Diabetic retinopathy can begin at any stage of this disease. Yearly dilated eye examinations are absolutely necessary to ensure that you maintain good vision, even if your diabetes is well controlled. The eye is also a place to view the body’s blood vessels without having to look through skin and bones. The information from the eye will give your family doctor or endocrinologist an advantage when caring for your diabetes.

Iowa EyeCare is one of the few clinics in Iowa and in the United States that use the OCT-Cirrus to help us diagnose diabetic eye disease. Cirrus technology is the most advanced clinical diagnostic tool in the world. It acts like an ultrasound and can show us high-resolution details within the light-sensitive retina.

Back