The Predictive Value of Patient and Eye Characteritic on the Coure of ubclinical Diabetic Macular Edema Original Reearch Article

Purpoe To define the coure of ubclinical diabetic macular edema (DME) and identify any predictor of progreion to clinically ignificant DME. Deign Retropective, obervational cae erie. Method etting: Private retina practice. patient population: One hundred and fifty-three eye of 153 patient with diabetic retinopathy and ubclinical DME. obervation procedure: Clinical chart review and longitudinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) meaurement. main outcome meaure: Change in OCT value and time to eventual treatment for clinically ignificant DME. Reult Over a median follow-up of 14 month (interquartile range, even to 25 month), 48 of 153 eye (31.4%) progreed to clinically ignificant DME. The number (%) of eye howing decreaed, unchanged, and increaed central ubfield mean thickne were 16 (10.5%), 117 (76.5%), and 20 (13.1%), repectively. None of the patient or eye variable typically aeed in clinical practice wa predictive of progreion from ubclinical DME to clinically ignificant DME. Concluion Progreion from ubclinical DME to clinically ignificant DME may be detected by erial clinical and OCT aement. ubclinical DME doe not inexorably progre over time cale of one to two year, and a ubtantial fraction of eye pontaneouly improve. Follow-up interval of four to ix month allowed detection of progreion to clinically ignificant DME. In thi ample of patient, OCT did not help in predicting which eye with ubclinical DME would progre to clinically ignificant DME.