Detecting Diabetes Through in Eye Exams

Dr. Corey Westerfeld: One of the common ways that diabetes affects us is actually in our eyes. The reason for that is the blood sugar, which is elevated with diabetes, it affects our blood vessels. In the eye, we have a lot of blood vessels in the eye, very tiny vessels. They can become particularly affected by diabetes. So when you have high blood sugars over a long period of time, that eventually affects those vessels, and that can ultimately lead to loss of vision. Typically, with diabetes, you're concerned about the heart, your brain, your kidneys, and the eyes. Those are the most common areas that get affected with diabetes. Most often, or oftentimes, patients can present first with vision changes. The sooner we can catch those, the more likely we're gonna be able to treat it, and to get improvements in their vision.