Prevalence of diabetic macular edema and risk factors among diabetic patients at the University of Gondar Tertiary Eye Care and Training Center, North West Ethiopia

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Diabetic macular edema (DME) is the most common cause of visual impairment in patients with diabetes mellitus. The prevalence of DME globally is around 6.8 % and in Ethiopia range from 5.7% to 11%.Different factors are associated with DME including poor glycemic control, longer duration, hypertension, dyslipidemia OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence and associated factors of diabetic macular edema among diabetic patients attending University of Gondar (UOG) hospital, tertiary eye care and training center, NW Ethiopia METHODS: A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted from March 2021 to October 2021. Socio-demographic, clinical and laboratory data of patients was gathered. The collected data was entered into epi-data 4.6 version, exported to SPSS version 20 and analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 165 diabetic patients were enrolled with mean age of 54.71 ±13.66 years, 50.9% male, 85.5% urban dwellers, 79.9% type 2 DM, 49.7% on oral hypoglycemic agents and the mean duration of diabetes was 7.93 years. Cataract was the commonest ocular morbidity and 42% of patients had at least mild vision impairment. The overall prevalence of DME was 17% and 5.5% of patients had clinically significant macular edema (CSME). The presence of proteinuria was 8.04 times more likely to have DME. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of DME among our patients was high. The presence of proteinuria was significantly associated with DME. Screening of diabetic patients for sight threatening retinopathy early and appropriate treatment is recommended.

Visual impairment among diabetes patients in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Although numerous primary studies have been conducted to determine the prevalence of visual impairment and its associated factors among diabetes patients in Ethiopia, these studies presented inconsistent findings, ranging from 7% [25] to 42% [26]. Therefore, this review visual impairment and determine the impact of its associated factors.…”

“…The twenty-six studies [20,25,26,, six studies [57][58][59][60][61][62] and two studies [63,64] were conducted using cross-sectional, retrospective cohort and case-control study designs respectively. Regarding geographical region, seventeen studies [20, 25, 26, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 45, 49-51, 55, 56, 60-62] were conducted in Amhara, eight studies [39,41,44,48,52,58,59,63] were conducted in Oromia, five studies [42,46,53,57,64] were conducted in Addis Ababa, three studies [37,47,54] were conducted in Southern nations, nationalities and peoples, and one study [34] was conducted in Sidama region.…”

“…The total sample size of the included studies was 11,884, where the smallest sample size was 81 [54] in Southern nations, nationalities and Peoples, and the largest sample size 739 [51] in Amhara region. The prevalence of visual impairment among diabetes patients was obtained from thirty-two included primary studies [20,25,26,, while the data regarding the associated factors of visual impairment were obtained from the twenty-two studies [20, 34, 35, 37-40, 43-47, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58-60, 62-64], with a response rate ranges from 89.33 to 100% (Table 1).…”

“…The quality of each study was evaluated using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) quality appraisal criteria [67]. Twenty-six studies [20,25,26,, six studies [57][58][59][60][61][62] and two studies [63,64] were appraised using JBI checklist for cross-sectional, cohort and case-control studies, respectively.…”

“…The cross-sectional studies scored between 5 and 7 out of a total of 8 points, while the cohort and case-control studies scored between 7 and 8 out of a total of 10 points. Hence, all the included primary studies [20,25,26, had high quality.…”