November is Diabetic Eye Disease Awareness Month.

November is Diabetic Eye Disease Awareness Month.

DID YOU KNOW?

More than 30 million Americans are living with diabetes.

Diabetes, and the increased blood sugar that comes with it, has the potential to cause permanent eye damage if not treated properly. Diabetic eye problems include diabetic retinopathy, cataracts, and glaucoma. Each condition can lead to permanent vision loss, due to diabetes. These conditions do not show symptoms until vision loss begins.

This image shows changes to the retina in a patient with diabetes:

Many diabetics do not notice any changes in their vision but have similar changes to their retinas. That’s why we encourage you to schedule a yearly dilated eye exam. Dilated eye exams are designed to give your eye doctors at Bay Eye Center a better view of the inside of the eye. They can help detect and treat the following conditions for patients with diabetes:

1. Glaucoma
2. Macular degeneration
3. Retinal tears
4. Ocular tumors 

And then there’s Optos!

Optos is a revolutionary retinal imaging tool that allows our eye doctors to see more of a person’s retina than ever before. Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s why Optos is important to you:

Plain and simple, Optos has the power to protect sight, prevent blindness, and detect life-threatening diseases, like cancer, stroke, and cardiovascular disease. It provides you peace-of-mind. Optos takes a high-resolution image showing a 200 degree view of the retina. Before Optos, we were only able to see a 45 degree view of the retina. Optos is pain-free and takes less than one second to capture a crystal clear image. It’s also ready for immediate review - so you don’t have to wait, worry, and wonder what the results are.

If you, or someone you know, has diabetes (and even if you don’t) and hasn’t had an eye exam in the last year, it’s time to schedule one. We’ll put your health first, just like we did for Nicole...

“Dr. Lynch is very detailed in his eye exams. Specifically with me being diabetic, he makes me feel like my best interests are his number one goal.” - Nicole S.