Published online Jul 25, 2015. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v6.i8.1005
Peer-review started: December 1, 2014
First decision: February 7, 2015
Revised: February 12, 2015
Accepted: May 8, 2015
Article in press: May 13, 2015
Published online: July 25, 2015
Processing time: 246 Days and 13.8 Hours
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the worldwide leading cause of legal blindness. In 2010, 1.9% of diabetes mellitus (DM) patients were legally blind and 10.2% had visual impairment. The control of DM parameters (glycemia, arterial tension and lipids) is the gold standard for preventing DR complications, although, unfortunately, DR still appeared in a 25% to 35% of patients. The stages of severe vision threading DR, include proliferative DR (6.96%) and diabetic macular edema (6.81%). This review aims to update our knowledge on DR screening using telemedicine, the different techniques, the problems, and the inclusion of different professionals such as family physicians in care programs.
Core tip: If telemedicine is especially suited for a particular medical specialisation, that specialisation is undoubtedly ophthalmology. The enormous healthcare pressure derived from the general population’s high demand for vision control and the prevalence of certain diseases which affect the eyes, such as diabetes mellitus, combined with the tremendous progress in diagnostic imaging systems in this speciality make it especially possible to send images over telemedicine networks for the diagnosis or even prevention of eye diseases, thus making the demand for the use of these types of methods extremely important.