Atlas of Ophthalmology

Diabetic Retinopathy and Arterial Hypertension (Colour Image, FFA)

Systemic Diseases -> Endocrine Disorders -> Diabetes Mellitus -> Retina -> Nonproliferative
The presented case (female, 62 years of age, BCVA 0.8/0.7) developed diabetes mellitus and arterial hypertension. The co-morbidity of diabetes, and arterial hypertension leaded to intraretinal hemorrhages, retinal microaneurysm and large areas of retinal capillary nonperfusion. Colour image showing only few intraretinal hemorrhages. FA depicting retinal microaneurysm (arrows) and large areas of retinal capillary nonperfusion (*). The retinal microaneurysm is a hallmark of diabetic retinopathy, although the pathogenesis of this vascular abnormality remains incompletely elucidated. Vascular BM damage, endothelial proliferation,changes in intraluminal rheology, and pericyte cell death have all been implicated as causal or contributory factors. Of these various changes, selective pericyte loss appears to be critical, since several independent studies have demonstrated that microaneurysms invariably lack viable pericytes (1) .Haiyan Wang et al. (2) showed, that the majority of diabetic microaneurysms were found at 37% ± 10% depth from the inner retinal surface. External diameter of microaneurysms averaged 104 μm (range 43-266 μm). (1) Stitt AW, Gardiner TA, Archer DB. Histological and ultrastructural investigation of retinal microaneurysm development in diabetic patients. Br J Ophthalmol. 1995 Apr;79(4):362-7. (2) Haiyan Wang, Jay Chhablani, William R. Freeman,Candy K. Chan,Igor Kozak,Dirk-Uwe Bartsch,Lingyun Cheng. Characterization of Diabetic Microaneurysms by Simultaneous Fluorescein Angiography and Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography.American Journal of Ophthalmology. Volume 153, Issue 5, May 2012, Pages 861–867

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