Assessment of Macular Structure and Function in Diabetic Patients Using Multifocal Electroretinogram and Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

Type II diabetes is a worldwide growing burden. One of its major issues affecting the middle-aged population and causing visual impairment is diabetic retinopathy. Traditionally diabetic retinopathy was always thought to have been only a microvascular disease. However, in recent years more studies have shed the light on the fact that a neurodegenerative element is part of the pathology and these studies also suggest that it may start even earlier than the clinically evident retinopathy. Thus, we conducted this cross-sectional study using mfERG (RETI-port/scan 21) as a non-invasive tool to assess the functional status of the diabetic macula, and we compared these results to the visual acuity and OCT (retinascan RS-3000 advance; NIDEK, Gamagori, Japan) measurements which detects anatomical changes of these diabetic patients in order to see if there is a significant correlation between them.