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Diabetic Retinopathy Symptoms
Knowing all this, what are the signs and symptoms of diabetic retinopathy? This condition often has no early warning signs or visual symptoms. Macular edema, which is known for its rapid affectation of vision, may not show any symptomatology for some time.
The patients that have an installed macular edema usually have a blurry or cloudy vision, affecting things such as read, drive or identifying a person´s face, and darkened or distorted images different in both eyes. During the day, vision may get better or worse. Approximately 10% of patients with diabetic maculopathy will have vision loss.
The early diabetic retinopathy stage has no or little symptomatology. These patients usually have 20/20 vision and their visual signs are not visible with a simple physical exam. The only way to detect this stage is with a funduscopic (back of the eye) exam, in which the microaneurysms can be seen.
Narrowed or blocked blood vessels, which causes retinal ischemia or lack of blood flow, can also be seen using the previous method, but for a better vision of the damage, an angiography is necessary.
In the advanced diabetic retinopathy, the abnormal new blood vessels can burst and bleed, leaking into the vitreous humor, blurring the vision and causing eye pain. The first bleeds are not that severe. Usually, they will leave a few spots floating (floaters) in the patient´s visual field, which often go away after a few hours.
A few days or weeks later, much greater bleeding occurs (often during sleep), blurring the vision in a major way only being able to differentiate light from dark. The blood may clear in a varied period of time, which could take from days to months or even years. In some cases, the blood will not clear. With the use of the funduscopic exam, the physician will see cotton wool spots and flame or dot-blot hemorrhages.
