New trends for early diabetic retinopathy diagnosis

Diabetes Mellitus is one of the most common chronic diseases in the world and is a critical public health problem that could even be considered a pandemic. The diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness in adults. Diabetic retinopathy is now considered to be a new neurodegenerative disease. In fact, retinal neurodegeneration is present before any microcirculatory abnormalities can be detected in ophthalmoscopy. Functional studies documenting electroretinogram abnormalities, loss of dark adaptation, contrast sensitivity and colour vision and abnormal microperimetry that occur before any vascular abnormality. Novel imaging optical devices have allowed that this pre-vascular damage to be quantified in a non-invasive and reproducible way with retinal layer and choroidal thickness measurement.