| Five
of our branches are registered with the Sheffield
Diabetic Eye Screening programme that is co-ordinated
by the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. If you are
a Sheffield resident, diabetic and not already having
your eyes checked at the hospitals, ask your practice
nurse at your GP's surgery. *
The practices are at: Herries road, Manor Top, Stocksbridge,
Totley Rise & Woodhouse.
Diabetic Retinopathy refers to damage
to the back of the eye (retina) caused by diabetes.
It is a condition, which tends to progress slowly,
at first without causing any visual symptoms: This
is called background retinopathy. It is characterised
by blockage of small blood vessels. Other blood vessels
dilate to compensate and they can become leaky and
fluid accumulates at the macula, the centre of vision:
diabetic maculopathy. This is the commonest form of
visual loss in older diabetics. When there are large
areas of blocked blood vessels the response is growth
of new vessels, which is known as proliferative retinopathy
and is another cause of visual loss. Background retinopathy
requires no treatment. Eye surgeons can treat proliferative
retinopathy and maculopathy with a laser.
The Sheffield Diabetic Eye Screening Programme
was originally set up over seven years ago by John
Talbot, consultant Ophthalmologist at the Royal Hallamshire
Hospital in conjunction with a number of local Optometrists.
You can book at the five Martyn Kemp practices listed
above (*) for retinal
images to be taken with the digital Fundus camera,
and then have your normal eye examination at any of
our 10 practices. The aim is that
all diabetics who are not currently having their eyes
examined at the hospitals will have their eyes checked
by the accredited optometrists; and that if there
is a problem with their eyes there is a direct referral
to the Eye Department. This speeds up the system and
the optometrist can assess the urgency of the referral.
The first step as a diabetic patient
is to ask the nurse at your GP's surgery who monitors
your diabetes to register you on the programme. They
will then send you a list of practices offering screening
with the digital retinal cameras. You then phone us
to make your appointment, or you can do this online.
We will undertake a normal sight test and in addition
we will dilate your pupils with eye drops and thoroughly
examine the retina. We advise people not to drive
for an hour or so after this appointment.
In order that sight threatening changes can
be detected and treated before vision is
lost it is essential that people with diabetes have
the back of their eyes examined at least once a year.
So if you have diabetes and are not attending the
hospitals or are not registered with the Eye Screening
Programme get down to your local doctors surgery straightaway
and ask the nurse to register you and then come and
see us when you get the forms. There is no
charge.
For those diabetics who cannot register because
they live outside Sheffield we still undertake
the same thorough examination of back of the eyes
(with the eye drops etc) and charge for the photos.
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