Awareness for need of regular eye exams and retinal involvement in diabetes patients

Recently, it was estimated that visual problems affecting individuals aged above 50 years account for more than 80% of blindness in world. Eye care facilities in general are underutilized as evident by studies reporting that almost half of persons with visual loss did not have eye checks in the preceding 5 years. Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a growing health problem worldwide. This study aims to assess and determine the awareness of patients with DM about need of periodic eye checkups and their awareness of retinal involvement. This is a cross sectional study done in medical outpatient clinic from 01/01/2018 to 31/12/2018. A total of 341 patients with DM were selected randomly and filled a questionnaire about the following variables: gender, age, type of DM, educational level, duration of diabetes, awareness of eye involvement, awareness of need of regular eye exam, current diabetes treatment, method to monitoring diabetes control, last time of eye examination, and also assessed the source of awareness. Statistical analysis done by SPSS 22. A total of 341 patients were included in the study, the mean age was 54 ± 6 years old, mean duration of diabetes was 6.6 ± 4.3 years, mean level of Hb A1c was 7.97 ± 1.3. Female patients were 54.3%, 85% of patients were with type 2 diabetes, and educational level of patients was 35.2% with university and 41.6% secondary school degree. There was significant association between awareness of retinal involvement in diabetes and duration of diabetes, education level and age groups, there was significant association between awareness for need of regular eye exams and duration of diabetes, type of diabetes, education level and age groups. Awareness of diabetics toward regular eye checkup is low despite the high knowledge of the presence of eye complications in DM. In addition, there was a problem of how and when to do examination, which was more in patients with longer duration of DM, and more in type 2 DM, education level is a major determinant of awareness. Most of the patients derive their knowledge from their physicians.eng