Prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in India: The All India Ophthalmological Society Diabetic Retinopathy Eye Screening Study 2014

AIM: The aim of this study is to ascertain the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in diabetic patients across the nation and attempt to establish history-based risk factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study of diabetic patients was conducted as an initiative of the All India Ophthalmological Society from 14(th) November to 21(st) November 2014. Known diabetics were evaluated voluntarily by members of the society at 194 centers using a structured protocol provided by the society for examination. The results were evaluated to ascertain the prevalence of DR in the population studied and to establish relation with gender, age, and history-based risk factors such as duration of diabetes, insulin use, and other end-organ disease using the Chi-square test. RESULTS: A total of 6218 known diabetics were screened. Totally, 5130 data entry forms were considered suitable for further evaluation. About 61.2% were males, 88.6% were between 40 and 80 years of age, almost two-thirds of the patients were from the west and south zones, and over half had diabetes more than 5 years. The data set was predominantly urban 84.7% and 46.1% had no family history. DR prevalence in the entire data set was 21.7%. Prevalence was more in males (P = 0.007), diabetics more than 5 years (P = 0.001), those above 40 years (P = 0.01), insulin users (P = 0.001), and history of vascular accidents (P = 0.0014). Significantly 22.18% of patients detected with DR had a vision of 6/18 or better in the worse eye. CONCLUSION: The study reiterated the findings of earlier regional studies on a pan Indian scale and put data in perspective.