What Are The Treatments For Diabetic Eye Problems?

When you are a diabetic, there are so many health concerns you need to be aware of. One you might not have thought of before is eye problems. There was a time when doctors couldn't help you if you had an ocular occlusion or diabetic blindness, but now there are new treatments that are helping patients save their eyesight. Here are some treatments that are available for diabetic eye problems.

Laser Treatments

One of the treatments used for diabetic retinopathy is laser treatments. Laser treatments can be done on a daily basis and in some cases is actually the best way to treat this problem. Lasers will target the damaged eye tissue and can treat leaking blood vessels by helping to seal the area where the leaking is occurring. Lasers can also remove any abnormal blood vessels from the eye that can cause problems. A doctor might use the laser internally, inside the eye, to improve the blood flow to the retina and help keep the eyesight intact.

For some patients, a combination of Anti-VEGF injections and laser treatments are the best way to combat vision problems and save the eyesight in diabetic patients. In some cases, this combination has been able to reverse retinopathy in severe cases. This treatment has improved in recent years and has had more success. Anti-VEGF injections are often used alone and is one of the more common treatments. It is pretty expensive and time-consuming. Injections are done at least once a month to ensure the treatment is working and this can be uncomfortable to the patient.

Eye Drops

A very new treatment that is seemingly able to help with many issues to the eyes that diabetics suffer from are eye drops. These eye drops work for age-related macular degeneration which has very similar characteristics as with people with diabetes and their eye problems. The thought is and seems to be proving true, that these eye drops can be developed into an effective treatment that could eventually eliminate the need for monthly injections. There is ongoing research into using eye drops for diabetics, but the research is proving hopeful.

Eye drops are considered the least invasive treatment and much more cost effective than more common treatments such as laser and injections. Patients are more comfortable with drops as opposed to most other treatments and there is no need to take the time to recover between treatments.

Get in touch with a center like Northwest Ophthalmology for more information.