Abstract
Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease characterized by chronic hyperglycemia. Twenty years after diagnosis of type 2 DM, 60% of those patients will develop retinopathy. As diabetic retinopathy (DR) minimizes visual acuity along with overlapping pathogenesis between diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) and DR, we assume that DFU is associated with DR. The aim was to calculate the prevalence of DR among DFU patients and to study the association between DFU and DR.
Methods: A retrospective review was used to gather information from all patients with type 2 DM with foot ulcer who undergo fundoscopic examination; 199 patients with DFU vs. 200 diabetic patients without DFU as a control group compared regarding each clinical variable and retinopathy status. Data sheet consists of (sociodemographic, biochemical and medications) along with SPSS statistics v21 implemented in our study.
Results: Among 199 patients with DFU, 71.4% were males, with a mean age of 63.4 +/- 12.5 and an average level of HbA1c was 9 +/- 2.48. We compared among patients with DFU and diabetic patients without DFU; the DFU group was older, predominantly males and mostly smokers. We divided DFU patients into two groups: 1) 45 patients with DR, among them 15% had PDR while 7.5% had NPDR. 2) 154 without DR patients. The prevalence of DR was 22.5%. Using chi-square, DR significantly associated with DFU (p < 0.001).
Conclusions: We found that 22.6% of patients with DFU had DR, and there was a significant association between DFU and DR. Among the results, we found a significant association between low hematocrit, gender, and HbA1c with DFU. Moreover, history of hypertension significantly associated with both DR and DFU. So, any patient with DFU, particularly those with hypertension, should be referred to an ophthalmologist to examine the retina.