Περίληψη:
Purpose
To evaluate the effect of the coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19)-related lockdown in the management of patients with diabetic
retinopathy (DR), including diabetic macular edema (DME), in a tertiary
reference center in Greece.
Methods
In this retrospective study, we first compared the number of patients
who were diagnosed with DR or DME in our clinic during the period of the
lockdown and during the same period of the previous year. In addition,
we included consecutive patients with DR or DME, who were followed up
and treated regularly in our clinic and their appointments deferred due
to lockdown, so as to compare the visual acuity, fundoscopy, and optical
coherence tomography (OCT) findings prior to and post lockdown.
Results
During the lockdown period, there was a statistically significant
decrease in patients with DR and DME as compared to the same period in
the previous year. Regarding patients with previously diagnosed DME,
there was a statistically significant worsening in their visual acuity
and central retinal thickness after lockdown as compared to the last
visit before lockdown (p<0.001 for both comparisons). Concerning
patients diagnosed with DR and without DME before lockdown, 30% of
patients with severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NDPR) and
8.3% of patients with quiescent proliferative DR (PDR) progressed to
active PDR while four out of 107 patients (3.7%) developed DME during
the lockdown. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that only the
time interval between the last visit before lockdown and the first visit
after the lockdown was associated with the best-corrected visual acuity
(BCVA) change (p=0.017).
Conclusions
The COVID-19-related lockdown was related to the postponement in patient
care, which resulted in significantly worse visual acuity outcomes in
patients with DR.
Συγγραφείς:
Chatziralli, Irini
Dimitriou, Eleni
Kazantzis, Dimitrios and
Machairoudia, Genovefa
Theodossiadis, Georgios
Theodossiadis,
Panagiotis
