Association of Dry Eye Disease with Diabetic Retinopathy

Objective: To find out the relationship of dry eye disease with diabetic retinopathy, duration of diabetes and blood sugar levels in patients of type 2 diabetes using ocular surface disease index (OSDI). Study Design: Cross sectional observational study. Place and Duration of Study: Rashid Latif Medical College / Arif Memorial Teaching Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan, from January to June 2019. Methodology: One hundred and thirty-six patients of type 2 diabetes, ages between 25 and 80 years of either gender, were selected from Outpatient Department of the Hospital. After clinical history, complete ocular examination including fundoscopy for diabetic retinopathy was performed. Random blood sugar levels were measured using Glucometer. OSDI was used to grade the dry eye disease (normal, mild, moderate and severe). Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 25. ANOVA and Post-hoc Tukey test were used to find out the significance of the results. Results: Among the 136 participants, 45 (33.10%) were males and 91 (66.90%) were females. Average age was 51.01 +/- 11.69 years. Association of dry eye symptoms with increasing age and diabetic retinopathy was statistically significant (p=0.031 and p=0.009 respectively). Gender, duration of diabetes, tear meniscus height and blood sugar random (BSR) were not significantly related with dry eye symptoms (p=0.580, 0.121, 0.285 and 0.536, respectively). Conclusion: Diabetic retinopathy and older age is significantly associated with dry eye disease. Diabetic patients who complain of dry eye should be referred to the ophthalmologists for fundoscopy to find out diabetic retinopathy.