ABSTRACT
AIMS: No information exists on the frequency of visual impairment in people with diabetes mellitus (DM) in Germany. In this study, the prevalence of vision impairment in those individuals was investigated. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 295 people (14221 consultations) at a university outpatient clinic with any type of DM and an available ETDRS-Score and visual acuity. The primary outcome was the prevalence of visual impairment, the secondary outcome was the correlation of the ETDRS-Score and limitations of visual acuity and the prevalence of higher ETDRS-Score with a visual impairment defined as a decimal-visus=0.3. RESULTS: The prevalence of visual impairment in participants with DM was 11.2%; among these individuals, 81.8% had no or non-proliferative retinopathy. In the DM2 subgroup, 81.5% (n=22) of the visually impaired participants had no DR, in contrast to only 16.7% (n=1) in the DM1 subgroup. Progression in ETDRS-Score led to worse visual acuity (r=-0.209; p<0.001). A significantly related covariates with impairment of the visual acuity for individuals with DM1 was the duration of diabetes (B=-0.007; p=0.001) and for individuals with DM2, the age (B=-0.008; p=0.009). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of impaired vision in people with diabetes in our cohort was 11.2%,<20% of visual impairment in people with diabetes is caused by diabetic retinopathy, and 69.7% of participants with visual impairment had no DR. In our study patients without visual impairment showed a similar distribution of DR severity levels regardless of the type of diabetes.