Authors : R. Gharaagaji , S. Fagihzadeh , M R. Meshkani and R. Rohipor
Abstract: One of the most important complications of diabetes is retinopathy. It is in turn one of the causes to visual impairment and even blindness. Researches show that more than 60% of type II diabetic patients and nearly all of type I being retinopathy after 20 years. 3.6% of type I and 1.6% of type II retinopathy diabetic patients will finally become blind so finding out the effective factors causing and developing retinopathy can help us to solve some of the sight problems of diabetic patients. So we study a sample of 591 diabetic patients that had gone to ophthalmology clinic in Farabi hospital. Sampling method was randomly and our study is cross-sectional. In this study independent variables and the severity of retinopathy in two eyes has been visited and examined by standard methods, so based on the severity of retinopathy, they were classified into four classes: Normal, Mild, Moderate-Severe and Proliferate. (We studied a sample of 591 diabetic patients referring to Farabi hospital in Tehran. The data were collected randomly and our study is cross-sectional). In this study 245 (41.5%) patients were type I diabetics and 346 (58.5%) of them were type II. The prevalence of retinopathy in type I diabetics in right eye was 51.4% whereas in the left eye, it was 48.98%. The prevalence of retinopathy in type 2 diabetics, in right and left eyes were 28.3 and 27.2%, respectively. To analyze the effective factors on the severity of retinopathy in type I, we used bivariate Bayesian cumulative regression analysis model. It was found the duration of diabetes, diastolic hypertension, BMI, sex, dose of insulin, proteinuria and macular edema have significant effect on the severity of retinopathy (p<0.05). The prevalence of retinopathy in this study do not have a great difference with other studies, furthermore, the effective factors were comparable to the mentioned ones in the field. Controlling the mentioned systemic factors and effective causes, regular examinations by ophthalmologists and internal medicines have been recommended to predict retinopathy incidence and its recurrence.
R. Gharaagaji , S. Fagihzadeh , M R. Meshkani and R. Rohipor , 2008. The Prevalence of Diabetic Retinopathy and Related Risk Factors in Diabetic Type I, in Tehran, Iran. Research Journal of Biological Sciences, 3: 596-600.