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Impact of the COVID-19 on the Control of Diabetic Patients in Diabetic Retinopathy and its Screening

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Submitted:

13 November 2022

Posted:

15 November 2022

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Abstract
(1) Background: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes mellitus (DM) and the COVID-19 pandemic has affected screening programmes. The aim of present study was to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the screening of diabetes patients in our Health Care Area (HCA); (2) Methods: A retrospective study of patients with DM who had attended the DR screening programme between January 2015 and June 2022. We studied attendance, DM metabolic control and DR incidence. (3) Results: Screening for DR decreased in the first months of the pandemic. Incidence of mild and moderate DR remained stable throughout the study, and we observed a little increase in severe-DR, proliferative-DR and neovascular glaucoma, during 2021 and 2022. (4) Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic caused a reduction in the number of patients screened for DM, although its effect on DR seems limited, with a similar number of patients with DR throughout 2015 to 2022, despite the number of patients with severe-DR and proliferative-DR increased in 2021 and 2022.
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Subject: Medicine and Pharmacology  -   Ophthalmology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
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