Aim:To determine the percentage and stage of diabetic retinopathy at the first ophthalmological examination after the patient’s diagnosis with type 2 diabetes mellitus.Methods:A retrospective descriptive study was conducted at ‘Clinique du Levant’ hospital between 2006 and 2016. A total of 484 randomly selected patients were included. Data were collected and analyzed for selected variables (sex, age, sources of referral, and duration of diabetes).Results:In total, 119 (24.6%) patients had diabetic retinopathy. Among them, 43 had proliferative diabetic retinopathy (8.9%). About 16.7% of the included patients had macular edema, which was severe in 6.2%. The average age of patients was 62.1 years with an average of 8.3 years of diabetes. About 55% were men, while 45% were women. The patients with no referral source presented 8.9 years after the onset of diabetes, whereas patients referred by general practitioners and secondary medical professionals presented after 5.8 and 5 years, respectively (p < 0.05), but they represented only 23.2% of diabetics. Women presented earlier than men (7.3 versus 9.1 years; p = 0.012). About 82.6% were symptomatic, 44.1% had a visual impairment on Snellen charts that was severe in 11.2%. Also, 37.8% of the patients had a visually significant cataract. The duration of diabetes was the only dependent variable, p < 0.0001. The average age, sources of referral, and sex were not related to the severity of retinopathy.Conclusion:Diabetics with a more severe diabetic retinopathy are presenting late to the ophthalmology clinics. There is a need to promote outreach programs for people with diabetes for early detection of diabetic retinopathy in Lebanon.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.