Visual function loss increases in diabetic retinopathy patients with more treatments

Patients with diabetic retinopathy report increasing symptoms of visual loss and quality-of-life impact as they undergo multiple treatments for the disease, according to a study.

Peter Scanlon and colleagues in the United Kingdom interviewed 227 patients to assess the impact of multiple treatments for diabetic retinopathy on their quality of life. The study included both patients having their first laser treatment or first follow-up appointment, and patients who had had multiple treatments with a clinically documented loss of visual function in at least one eye.

Loss of visual function was defined in the study as visual acuity of 6/12 or worse. The patients were fairly evenly divided between those who had proliferative diabetic retinopathy (54%) and those with macular edema (46%).

Before initial treatment, the most frequently reported symptom was blurred vision (55%). In general, first-time-treatment patients reported fewer symptoms than the multi-treatment patients. After finishing the initial round of laser treatment, patients reported a pronounced reduction of quality-of-life impacts, and increasing impact was seen with multiple treatments.

Patients said that their expectations were basically met by the laser treatment, but it had less of an impact than they had hoped.

The study is published in the August issue of Diabetic Medicine.