Incidence and progression of diabetic retinopathy in an Aboriginal Australian population: results from the Katherine Region Diabetic Retinopathy Study (KRDRS). Report no. 2

Abstract

Results of the KRDRS show that despite a lower overall incidence of diabetic retinopathy among Aboriginal diabetics compared to the general Australian diabetic population, there are important reasons to consider Aboriginal diabetics at special risk. These reasons include the highest reported incidence of vision-threatening retinopathy in Australia, one of the highest ever reported incidences of CSME in the world and the likelihood that the severity of the problem may be underestimated because of the relatively short observation time and the low average time since diagnosis. It is also acknowledged that the small numbers in the study limit our ability to reliably detect progression between subsets of the population and much larger studies are required to make statistically significant comparisons.

The Wisconsin Epidemiologic Study of Diabetic Retinopathy XXIII: The Twenty-five-Year Incidence of Macular Edema in Persons with Type 1 Diabetes

“…Blood pressure has inconsistently been found to be associated with prevalence and incidence of ME in persons with type 1 diabetes 8-11,13,16,41. Selective mortality may be attenuating the relationship of blood pressure and hypertension to the incidence of ME in the current study, that is, participants with high blood pressure who developed ME may have died in the 11-year interval between the 14 and 25-year examinations before being examined.…”

Virtual community consultation? Using the literature and weblogs to link community perspectives and health technology assessment

“…Inclusion of community perspectives in the review focus, as provided in this study, challenges the underlying assumption that provision of diabetic retinopathy screening is the best approach to reduce the level of diabetic eye disease in rural and remote populations in Australia and allows examination of how diabetic retinopathy screening sits within health resource management. Recent studies 40,41 show lower overall incidence of diabetic retinopathy among Aboriginal people living with diabetes than in the overall Australian population, although the results were not age adjusted. However, higher incidence of vision threatening complications and faster disease progression were reported.…”

Evaluating the impact of optical coherence tomography in diabetic retinopathy screening for an Aboriginal population

“…In Australia, DR is seven times more common in Indigenous Australians than in non‐Indigenous Australians as a result of higher diabetes prevalence . This is exacerbated by the increased rate of progression of DR in Indigenous Australians . Despite this, there is limited eye care access, with only 20% of Indigenous adults with diabetes surveyed meeting Australian guidelines for annual eye examinations .…”