Diabetic macular edema. Epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, clinical features, treatment

The article reviews domestic and international publications addressing the features of spectral optic coherence tomography in patients with diabetes mellitus and diabetic macular edema. Modern concepts of pathogenesis, epidemiology, diagnostic techniques and treatment of diabetic macular edema are described. Diabetes mellitus is one of the World’s most important medical and social problems. The significance of the problem is due to the prevalence of diabetes. The incidence is increasing annually in all countries, and the catastrophic positive trend can be treated as non-infective epidemics. Diabetic retinopathy is considered as one of the most severe specific eye diseases in diabetes. Despite significant advances and new directions of medical and surgical treatment in the last years, macular edema is the most common cause of central visual acuity reduction in diabetes. The most common and informative method of diagnosis of diabetic macular edema is optical coherence tomography. This non-invasive and precise method, allowing to obtain an cross section images of studied tissues in vivo, to estimate the thickness of the retina in micrometers, the volume in cubic millimeters and its structure. Introduction of this method induced revolutionary changes in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic retinopathy. Treatment of diabetic macular edema requires compensating the set of biological and pathophysiological local and systemic changes in the eye, occurring in diabetes. Currently treatments for diabetic retinopathy include laser surgery, surgical techniques (vitrectomy), intravitreal injections of corticosteroids and anti-vascular endothelial growth factor medications. Despite the results achieved it diagnosis and treatment of diabetic macular edema, these questions require further research.