Aprajita Sinha1, Nitin Batra2, Arun Bhatti3, Sahiba Bedi4
BACKGROUND
Diabetes is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality all over the world. Diabetic Retinopathy is influenced by various systemic risk factors, one of them being hypertension. Blood pressure control has been shown to reduce the risk for both retinopathy and nephropathy. This study shows the link between hypertension and diabetic retinopathy and the benefit of good blood pressure control over diabetic retinopathy.
The aim of this study is to determine the impact of hypertension in patients with diabetic retinopathy.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
This study was conducted on 250 subjects in the Department of Ophthalmology and inpatient wards of CMC, Ludhiana, who were diagnosed to have diabetes mellitus type 2 for a minimum duration of 5 years, which included 125 subjects with hypertension and 125 subjects without hypertension.
RESULTS
In the diabetes only group, there were 119 patients (95%) with various degrees of Nonproliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (NPDR) and 6 patients (5%) with Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (PDR), whereas in diabetes and hypertension group, 98 patients (78%) had various degrees of NPDR and 27 patients (22%) had PDR. The distribution of patients with both diabetes and hypertension group is skewed more towards severe forms of NPDR and PDR (NPDR p-value: 0.007 and PDR p-value: 0.006).
CONCLUSION
Patients in Diabetes and Hypertension group have more severe forms of Diabetic Retinopathy as compared to diabetes only group, so we can infer
