VIDEO: Benefits of better awareness of DME

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I think one of the most critical part of this disease is that we need to diagnose these cases at a much earlier stage. And if we diagnose them at an earlier stage, we can offer the treatment which will prevent the structural damage which happens if the disease stays there for a long time. So, if I'm seeing a patient at a much earlier stage where there is minimal structural damage, then if we treat these patients, they will recover good vision and then we can maintain their good vision. However, if they come to us at a very late stage where there is already so much structural damage which has already happened, and even if we do the best treatment, even if the swelling comes down, these patients don't have improvement in the visual acuity. I think one of the most important thing would be to make our patients aware of this disease as well as our physicians, and our primary care physicians also should be aware of certain medications which can cause diabetic macular edema. Some of the systemic medications are associated with diabetic macular edema, and we request our primary care physicians to avoid prescribing those medications and making sure their diabetic control is really good along with their other systemic issues such as blood pressure or cholesterol. And I think once all these things are very well controlled, we see that our patients do really well. So, I think the message to our primary care physicians is that if we can maintain their systemic control really well, then I think these patients with diabetic macular edema will respond really well to our treatment as well as will have better visual outcome.