Study of awareness of diabetic retinopathy among the patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus: A prospective study

Aims and Objective: To evaluate awareness of DR among a sample of T2DM in Karnal. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and forty seven diabetic patients were studied at Bharti Hospital and from Jan 2017 to July 2017. Details on awareness about DR, screening for DR, last ophthalmological evaluation, report of screening by fundus photography, quality of fundus photo and reason for poor quality were recorded. Results: Mean age of study cohort was 53.95±10.42 years. Most common age group was 51-60 (33.20%). Most of the diabetes patients knew that diabetes causes eye problem (80.16%), of them only 55.56% knew specifically diabetes causes retinopathy, diabetes causes Glaucoma (57.07%) and diabetes predisposes to cataract (68.69%). Further evaluation regarding awareness of symptoms revealed that most of them were aware regarding the blurred vision (72.22%) and blindness (68.18%), whereas most of the patients were not aware about the floating black dots/lines (78.79%), fluctuation of vision (85.86%), dark or empty spaces in the visual field (86.87%), difficulty in perception of image (86.36%), double vision (84.85%) and eye pain (79.89%). Duration of DM is related to eye disease (69.70%), dietary control and life style modifications are important for control of diabetes (76.77%), whereas 67.68% were unaware that the eye problem can be controlled/avoided with regular medication and diabetic control. Conclusion: Awareness of DR and associated factors especially symptoms of DR are less among the T2DM patients of study place. It is very important to spread the awareness regarding DR though various means of communication in order to decrease the prevalence of DR.