Introduction: The purpose of this systematic review was to study whether contrast sensitivity assessment in people with diabetes could be a reliable test in early detection of diabetic retinopathy. A systematic search based on population, intervention, comparison, and outcome strategy was performed.
Methods: PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for English articles of human patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and contrast sensitivity measurements as domain studied.
Results: Twentyone comparative cross-sectional studies were included. All of them showed significant loss of contrast sensitivity in people with diabetes and diabetic retinopathy regarding control patients of the same age, regardless of the method used. However, those without diabetic retinopathy, involve a loss of contrast sensitivity, although not always significant.
Conclusion: Changes in contrast sensitivity suggest that there is damage to the retina prior to the vascular ones and that they could be detected by this test.
Keywords: Contrast sensitivity; Diabetes complication; Diabetes mellitus; Diabetic retinopathy; Visual disorders.