Prevalence of Impairment of Visual Acuity and Severity of Retinopathy in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

Aims No information exists on the frequency of visual impairment in people with diabetes mellitus (DM) in Germany. In this study, the prevalence of vision impairment in those individuals was investigated.

Methods We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 295 people (14221 consultations) at a university outpatient clinic with any type of DM and an available ETDRS-Score and visual acuity. The primary outcome was the prevalence of visual impairment, the secondary outcome was the correlation of the ETDRS-Score and limitations of visual acuity and the prevalence of higher ETDRS-Score with a visual impairment defined as a decimal-visus</=0.3.

Results The prevalence of visual impairment in participants with DM was 11.2%; among these individuals, 81.8% had no or non-proliferative retinopathy. In the DM2 subgroup, 81.5% (n=22) of the visually impaired participants had no DR, in contrast to only 16.7% (n=1) in the DM1 subgroup. Progression in ETDRS-Score led to worse visual acuity (r=−0.209; p<0.001). A significantly related covariates with impairment of the visual acuity for individuals with DM1 was the duration of diabetes (B=−0.007; p=0.001) and for individuals with DM2, the age (B=−0.008; p=0.009).

Conclusions The prevalence of impaired vision in people with diabetes in our cohort was 11.2%,<20% of visual impairment in people with diabetes is caused by diabetic retinopathy, and 69.7% of participants with visual impairment had no DR. In our study patients without visual impairment showed a similar distribution of DR severity levels regardless of the type of diabetes.

Key words

diabetes - retinopathy - prevalence - impaired vision - screening

Publication History

Received: 16 June 2021
Received: 04 January 2022

Accepted: 20 January 2022

Article published online:
08 August 2022

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