A wide array of systemic diseases have the potential to impact Healthy Sight, including diabetes; AIDS and other viral infections; genetic disorders such as albinism; thyroid dysfunction and other hormonal irregularities; cancer and many of the chemotherapeutic agents used to treat it; cardiovascular disease; and allergy and autoimmune disorders.
Diabetes and Ocular Health
The current epidemic of diabetes and its vision-threatening ocular sequelae have important implications for Healthy Sight and Healthy Sight Counseling.
More information on patients with diabetes and Healthy Sight Counseling is available here
The eye is one of the most frequent and most important target organs for diabetes, and diabetes-related eye disease is one of the major causes of visual impairment and blindness worldwide. There exist both direct ocular sequelae of diabetes (eg, diabetic retinopathy) and indirect sequelae (eg, increased incidence of such vision-threatening ocular diseases as cataract, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration [AMD]).
Diabetic Retinopathy
More information on diabetic retinopathy and Healthy Sight Counseling is available here
One of the major complications of diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, is diabetic retinopathy, which occurs in an estimated 40% of diabetics overall. In 20% of patients, this retinopathy eventually becomes vision-threatening. The longer the duration of the disease, the more likely the occurrence of diabetic retinopathy. In persons with type 1 diabetes, diabetic retinopathy is nearly universal 20 years post diagnosis; in persons with type 2 diabetes, incidence of retinopathy exceeds 60% for those 20 years post diagnosis. It has been observed that nearly every person diagnosed with diabetes before age 30 will develop retinopathy within 20 years of diagnosis.
Retinopathic damage will already have occurred in approximately 5% of patients diagnosed with diabetes by
age 30. It is worth emphasizing that many individuals will have experienced visual loss secondary to diabetic retinopathy before their systemic disease is diagnosed and treated. The World Health Organization has estimated that a startling 50% of all people with diabetes are undiagnosed. About 20% of those newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes already have diabetic retinopathy at the time of diagnosis. In these patients, it may actually be the retinopathy that leads to the diagnosis of diabetes. This is of particular importance to the vision care professional practicing Healthy Sight Counseling; in some of these cases, it may be the vision care professional who is the first to identify the diabetes.