Abdullah Naeem Syed, Muhammad Safdar, Shahid Abbas.
Systemic predictors of diabetic macular edema in patients visiting tertiary hospital.
Pak J Surg Jan ;36(4):343-8.

Objective: To evaluate the systemic predictors of diabetic macular edema in patients of tertiary care hospital of Rawalpindi. Material and Methods: A cross sectional study of 8 months was performed on 191 diabetic patients at Retina Department of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi. The research perfomas were filled from all participants of the study to kept them on proper follow ups at the clinic which contained the variables for demographics of the patients, their diabetic type, diabetic age, treatment modality, consumption of alcohol or smoking, also systemic i.e. blood pressure, results of renal function test, hemoglobulin A1c (HbA1c) level, lipid profile of serum, urine albumin level of 24hrs, and neuropathy existence were also noted and entered in the data. The ophthalmological examination of every patient was also performed and noted on performa, The patients with age above 18 years and diagnosed to have diabetes were included, while patients with other ocular complication such as vitreomacular traction, epiretinal membrane, etc.) and opacity at media which affect the reliability of OCT imaging like dense cataract, uveitis, etc or those who have insufficient data for the study were excluded from the study. All the collected data was entered to SPSS 22.0 for the statistical analysis. Results: The DME was detected in 83 (43.45%) patients and DR was found in 108 (56.5%) of the 191study participants. The frequency of DME was found significantly greater in those patients who had HbA1c value of 7.0% or greater (p=0.029). The diabetic type had found no effect on DME while duration was significantly found longer in DME patients, mostly in the patient who had the diabetes history of previously one or two decade (p 0.001). The comparison of normo-albuminuric, micro-albuminuric, and macro-albuminuric patients were also done for DME and found statistically significant difference, the p-value was found 0.001. Conclusion: Duration of diabetes, baselines of patients like creatinine levels, lipoprotein levels and level of albuminuria has statistically significant associations of Diabetic macular edema. Proper observation of the underlying conditions in diabetic patient on periodic intervals can help prevent the vision threatening condition of DME.

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