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Time to fellow eye involvement in patients with unilateral diabetic macular oedema

Eye volume 37, pages 2761–2767 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objective

To examine the time to onset of disease in the fellow eye of patients with unilateral DMO in routine clinical practice and to identify risk factors for development of bilateral DMO.

Design

Retrospective cohort study.

Participants

One hundred forty treatment-naive patients 18 years or older with unilateral DMO presenting to Cole Eye Institute between January 2012 and July 2021.

Methods

Records of patients with unilateral DMO were reviewed for development of DMO in the fellow eye. Demographic, diabetic, ocular, and systemic characteristics were collected at initial DMO diagnosis date. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed and significant factors were modelled using Kaplan-Meier curves.

Results

Fifty patients with conversion to bilateral DMO and 90 patients without conversion were identified. Average time to bilateral DMO was 15.0 ± 15.7 months. 64% of patients converted within 1 year and 90% converted within 3 years. HbA1c (p = 0.003), diabetic retinopathy duration (p = 0.029), and diabetic foot disease (DFD) (p = 0.002) were identified as significant risk factors for conversion. Patients with better visual acuity at time of initial diagnosis and history of panretinal photocoagulation (PRP) (p = 0.044) or focal laser (p = 0.035) in the primary eye were also more likely to convert.

Conclusions

Participants were most likely to develop fellow eye DMO within the first year after initial DMO diagnosis. In routine clinical practice, poor glycaemic control and DFD were risk factors associated with bilateral eye involvement. Clinicians may consider screening the fellow eye of high-risk individuals at each appointment within the first year of diagnosis.

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Fig. 1: Patient selection PRISMA.
Fig. 2: Forrest plot displaying hazard ratios from multivariate analysis.
Fig. 3: Analysis of conversion probability stratified by baseline criteria.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

    Peter Alsaloum, Matthew W. Russell, Victoria Blaga, Blanche L. Kuo, Anna K. Wu, Brian J. Liu, Colin M. Xu, Justin C. Muste, Madhukar Kumar & Rishi P. Singh

  2. Center for Ophthalmic Bioinformatics, Cole Eye Institute, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44195, USA

    Matthew W. Russell, Blanche L. Kuo, Anna K. Wu, Carolina C. S. Valentim, Madhukar Kumar & Rishi P. Singh

Authors
  1. Peter Alsaloum
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  2. Matthew W. Russell
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  3. Victoria Blaga
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  5. Anna K. Wu
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  8. Colin M. Xu
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Contributions

PA was responsible for protocol design, data collection and analysis, and manuscript writing. MWR was responsible for data collection and analysis. VB, BLK, AKW, BJL, CCSV, CMX, and JCM were responsible for data collection. MK was responsible for manuscript writing and editing. RPS was responsible for designing the project and for providing feedback on the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rishi P. Singh.

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Competing interests

RPS reports personal fees from Genentech/Roche, Alcon/Novartis, Zeiss, Bausch+Lomb, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Gyroscope and Asceplix and grants from Apellis and Graybug. Other authors have no financial disclosures to report.

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Alsaloum, P., Russell, M.W., Blaga, V. et al. Time to fellow eye involvement in patients with unilateral diabetic macular oedema. Eye 37, 2761–2767 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-023-02410-5

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