Objective: To investigate the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and diabetic macular edema (DME) in Beixinjing District, and analyze the image characteristics of their Optical coherence tomography (OCT), so as to evaluate the correlation among DME and the grade of DR as well as posterior vitreous detachment (PVD).
Methods: In a prospective study, OCT was performed in 151 eyes of 100 type 2 diabetes patients with DR and 102 normal eyes as control subjects.
Results: 795 cases were examined, and 215 of them were diagnosed to have DR. The average thickness of macular fovea was 195.56 microm in 151 eyes from 100 random sampling. 46 eyes had macular thickening. Three characteristics were found in the images of OCT in the patients with DME: sponge-like retinal swelling in 35 eyes (76.1%), macular cystoid edema in 8 eyes (17.4%), and serous retinal detachment in 3 eyes (6.5%). The statistical analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between the thickness of macular fovea and negative correlation with best-corrected visual acuity (r = 0.2869, P = 0.0004). There was statistic significance between the severity of DR and DME (P = 0.0003). But there was no statistic significance between DME and PVD.
Conclusions: The prevalence of DME is 37.1% in this district. Three type images of OCT were demonstrated in DME. The macular thickness is correlated with the severity of DR regardless of PVD.