Vision Science and Eye

Biography

Biography: Vadrevu K. Raju

Abstract

In 2014, 422 million people had diabetes worldwide, with a global prevalence of 8.5% in adults over 18 years of age. The prevalence is increasing all over the world, but a more rapid rise is occurring in low- and middle-income countries. While incredible advances in medicine have happened over the past 60 years, tertiary care is not the answer to the diabetes pandemic. In 2017, the United States spent nearly $3.5 trillion on healthcare. A treatment-based public health system could have ruinous consequences on the economies
of developing countries, where one vial of insulin may cost the equivalent of a month’s salary. Instead, a balanced, whole population public health approach to diabetes intervention is needed, where public policy, prevention, and tertiary treatment are implemented simultaneously. As a part of that system, ophthalmologists are at the forefront of monitoring and treating diabetes as they are sometimes the first to suspect that a patient is diabetic due to vision changes. This is critical, as the number of young productive patients that will lose their vision because of diabetic complications is predicted to be 10 times greater than the number of older patients affected by cataracts. After a diabetes diagnosis, patients should be counselled regarding beneficial lifestyle modifications, be encouraged to tightly control their glucose levels, and treated promptly and appropriately when diabetic eye complications occur.