Diabetes top cause of blindness

Studies have found that retinal diseases and diabetes top the list of diseases that cause blindness. An eye clinic at the Society of Rehabilitation and Services for Optical Disability conducted a study that examined a sample of 54 people with poor eyesight. The results pointed to the need to focus on regular follow-ups for people with diabetes due to the high proportion of the disease in Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Mohammad Sarfaraz Khan, a consultant in impaired vision and a member of the Seventh Session of the Scientific Body Association for Impaired Vision, supervised the study. He emphasized the need to care for visually impaired patients, pointing out that retinitis disease is the leading cause of impaired vision, a rate that has reached 31 percent of the total visitors to the clinic recently.
The increasing number of visually impaired patients as a result of retinopathy is due to diabetes.
Diabetes has risen from the fourth place to second place of the diseases causing visual impairment and blindness. Currently, 20 percent of the visitors to the outpatient clinic suffer from visual impairment due to diabetes.
These findings give an indication about the risk of damage by the high incidence of diabetes in Saudi Arabia, which currently affects 30 percent of the total population.
The study suggests that diabetes may exacerbate the number of cases of blindness and visual impairment in the coming years unless action is taken to deal with this situation.
According to the study, about 81 percent of cases are patients over 16 years, which is the age group on which social development and economic development of communities depend.
Other causes of visual impairment include atrophy of the optic nerve, glaucoma, retinopathy of old age, albinism, severe myopia, Stargardt disease, glaucoma since birth, Behçet’s disease, degeneration of the cornea, congenital eye diseases, keratoconus, and retinal detachment.
Eighty-seven percent of patients were able to take advantage of visual aids and prosthetic devices to deal with visual impairment, while 4 percent could not benefit from these means due to the advanced stages of their visual disability.
Nine percent of patients could not be examined because of the additional severe disabilities associated with their visual disabilities, which vary between deafness, muteness, motor disabilities, intellectual disabilities, Bardet Biedl syndrome, and hearing impairment.
These findings confirm that the additional disabilities associated with visual impairment represent a major challenge in the examination of these patients, especially those who have a visual impairment accompanied by a mental disability. All patients of these additional disabilities lack services within their society, and this poses as a significant burden on their families and the community.