Ocular complications of diabetes

Diabetesmellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease described by raised blood glucose (BG). DM is a global epidemic and the prevalence is expected to continue to rise. The ocular complications of DM destruct the quality of life and carry an extremely high financial stress. While systemic control of BG can reduce the ocular complications they cannot stop them, especially if clinical symptoms already exist. With the advancements in biodegradable polymers, implantable ocular devices can release medication slowly to terminate the action, and in some cases they can reverse, diabetic complications in the eye.

One of the ocular complications associated with Diabetes is diabetic retinopathy (DR) which is a progressive blinding disease that affects millions people, and it a ruling cause of blindness. DR can be categorised into two types, nonproliferative DR and proliferative DR.

Once this pathological cycle of diabetic retinopathy begins, controlling blood glucose has little or no effect on the ocular diabetic complications. That is mainly due to a cascade of inflammatory and angiogenic factors that no longer respond to well controlled blood glucose levels. Therefore, DR likely will eventually require implant therapy.