Your risk for diabetic retinopathy depends largely on two things:
how long you have had diabetes and whether or not you have kept good control of
your blood sugar.
You can control some risk factors, which are things that may
increase your risk for diabetic retinopathy and its complications. Risk factors
that you can control include:
- Pregnancy. Women who
have diabetes are at increased risk of developing retinopathy during pregnancy.
In women who already have retinopathy when they become pregnant, the condition
can become much worse during pregnancy.
- Consistently high blood sugar. High blood sugar levels increase your risk of retinopathy. Keeping your blood
in a target range can reduce your risk for diabetic
retinopathy and can slow the progression of the disease if it has already
- High blood pressure. In general, people with diabetes who also have high blood
pressure are more likely to develop complications that affect the blood vessels
in the body, including those in the eyes.
- Delayed diagnosis and treatment. Getting a dilated eye exam will not
prevent retinopathy. But it may reduce your risk of severe vision loss from
complications of retinopathy. By detecting it early, you can get treatment that can prevent vision loss and delay
the progression of the disease.
- Smoking. Although smoking
has not been proved to increase the risk of retinopathy, smoking may make many
of the other health problems faced by people with diabetes worse, including
disease of the small blood vessels.
If you have type 2 diabetes and use the medicine
rosiglitazone (Avandia, Avandamet, Avandaryl) to treat your diabetes, you may
have a higher risk for problems with the center of the retina (the macula). The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the makers of the drug have warned
that taking this medicine could cause swelling in the macula, which is called