Diagnosing Diabetic Retinopathy - Diabetic Retinopathy: The Aging Eye Preventing And Treating Eye Disease
Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School
Diagnosing diabetic retinopathy
Unfortunately, diabetic retinopathy has no early warning signs. The best way to protect yourself is to understand your risk and receive vision testing as necessary. Anyone with diabetes — either type 1 or type 2 — is at risk. For that reason, if you have diabetes, it's important to get a comprehensive dilated eye exam at least once a year.
Comprehensive eye exams can detect macular edema and diabetic retinopathy in the earliest stages. If the problem is treated quickly enough, it is possible to prevent severe vision loss and blindness. A regular eye exam includes various procedures to detect early problems: a vision acuity test to identify problems with distance vision, a dilated eye exam to reveal damage to the retina and optic nerve, and tonometry to measure the pressure inside the eye. (For more information about these procedures, see "The eye examination.")
| Last updated: | June 19, 2007 |
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Medical content reviewed by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School. Harvard Health Publications, Copyright © 2007 by President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Used with permission of StayWell.
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