Abstract :
Diabetic retinopathy is the most common eye complication in diabetic patients that early detection of this complication is essential. The aim of this study was to evaluate ophthalmic artery index in diabetic retinopathy by Doppler ultrasound. In this cross-sectional study, 64 patients were studied in 4 groups (healthy, diabetic without retinopathy, background retinopathy and proliferative retinopathy). Resistance index (RI) and Pulsatile Index (PI) were assessed by color Doppler ultrasound. The obtained data were analyzed by ANOVA and chi-square test and ROC curve. RI in diabetic patients with proliferative retinopathy has the highest mean (0.83) and the lowest mea was observed in healthy subjects (0.54) (P <0.001) as well as in PI, the highest rate was in diabetic patients with proliferative retinopathy (1.41) and the lowest was in healthy subjects (0.92) (P <0.001). The results of our study showed that the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and overall accuracy of RI and PI in diabetic patients with proliferative retinopathy in the best cut-off points (0.645 and 1.0175 respectively) were 100%. Ophthalmic artery index RI and PI was significantly increased in patients with diabetic retinopathy and the sensitivity and specificity for detection retinopathy was 100%. Color Doppler ultrasound method is more efficient for screening diabetic patients with retinopathy.
