October 19, 2021
Depending on the case, the treatment of ocular diabetes can be done with laser or injections. Ophthalmologist José Henriques explains the difference:
In proliferative diabetic retinopathy, the laser has a very important effect with excellent results. As for diabetic macular oedema, which is another form of diabetic retinopathy where the blood vessels let blood contents pass through and form retinal oedema, the laser is not the main treatment. Only 3% of patients manage to improve their results.
In this situation, what we usually do is, in fact, injections of anti-VEGF. Anti-VEGF is a drug that blocks VEGF, which causes the vessels to let the content pass out, and at that point we manage to control the macular oedema by injecting the blocker.
The results are not always totally satisfactory, and sometimes you have to use corticoids or lasers, but generally speaking the results are quite good. To conclude, I would say that it is important to act early and, in this way, we achieve better results with fewer resources.
Tomorrow we'll talk about the danger of floaters.
