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Should diabetes retinal screening intervals change?
Author(s) -
Leese G. P.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
diabetic medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.474
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 1464-5491
pISSN - 0742-3071
DOI - 10.1111/j.1464-5491.2012.03752.x
Subject(s) - medicine , diabetes mellitus , natural history , retinal , disease , type 2 diabetes , optometry , intensive care medicine , ophthalmology , endocrinology
Diabet. Med. 30, 43–45 (2013) Abstract There is accumulating evidence that the natural history of diabetic eye disease is sufficiently slow that 2‐yearly retinal screening, or even longer, may be safe for some patients with diabetes. The information technology underpinning call–recall systems within screening programmes permits a more sophisticated approach to organizing retinal screening, as directed by the clinical evidence. This commentary explores the evidence for moving towards a biennial retinal screening programme for patients with Type 2 diabetes and diabetes duration of less than 10 years. Such an approach may allow capacity to introduce 6‐monthly screening for high‐risk patients, a targeted approach to recurrent defaulters and possible introduction of new aspects of screening such as optical coherence tomography, in addition to accommodating for the expanding number of patients with diabetes. A UK–four nations group is now critically looking at the evidence for any such changes.