Video: Does diabetic retinopathy need urgent treatment?

In this video, I clarify if diabetic retinopathy needs urgent treatment.

The treatment for diabetic retinopathy depends on what type of diabetes in the eye you have. Now, if you have swelling in the back of your eye – we call that diabetic maculopathy – and that can cause blurred vision. And there are different types of treatment for that, they include laser treatment and more effective treatment now, which are injections into the back of the eye.

Now if you have the blood vessels that are growing in the back of the eye, you need treatment very quickly because every day they’re present, they can bleed and cause a dense bleed into the back of the eye.

You’re into trouble there because obviously we’re having to do further operations to remove things like blood from the eye. And we don’t want to get into that. So prevention is the key, identifying conditions such as diabetic retinopathy early are the key to preventing the problems of losing your vision.

So if you feel that that’s relevant to you, please feel free to ring the number at the end of this video and we can discuss what options or tests you need to have it done.

About Jaheed Khan

My name is Jaheed Khan and I am a Consultant Eye Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital and Clinica London.

My special expertise is in cataract surgery and conditions affecting the back of the eye, the retina, including AMD (Age Related Macular Degeneration), diabetic retinopathy, and various other diseases of the retina.

I have over 15 years experience in treating people with eye problems just like you, and have published extensively in scientific journals about treating eye conditions.

In my NHS practice, I am responsible day-to-day for the training of the eye surgeons of the future.