A case study of a patient with diabetic retinopathy

Abstract

The patient, in this report, is a 52 years old male driver who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) five years ago without diabetic retinopathy at the baseline. The patient was being monitored for two intervals. It was at the second interval which he was diagnosed with proliferative retinopathy; in fact, the progression rate of retinopathy from its first sign, which occurred at the middle of the first and second interval, to the point at which the patient lost his vision from the left eye occurred within a year. In this work, we introduce a new factor ignored through all the previously conducted studies, namely, type of profession. This factor which contributes to occupational stress plays an important role in the progression of proliferative retinopathy. We speculate that this factor can accelerate the progression of this disease dramatically, even when the other risk factors are not present.

Keywords: Occupational stress; Proliferative diabetic retinopathy; Type2 diabetes mellitus.