Saturday, September 28, 2013

Clinics in 9 Appalachian counties will offer high-tech eye screenings to head off common ailment that blinds diabetics

Kentucky has single of the nation's highest toll of diabetes, but partly the diabetics in rural Kentucky don't cover twelve-monthly eye exams – even though near 30 percent of diabetics completed 40 cover diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of loss of sight amongst diabetic adults.
To stem with the aim of warning, units of the University of Kentucky are using a three-year federal grant to bring diabetic eye screening to diabetics in nine Kentucky Appalachian counties. Diabetic retinopathy can be treated, or avoided altogether, if the disease is detected before time sufficient.

While studies cover found with the aim of 90 percent of diabetics consult their doctor in the region of their disease, in the region of partly the diabetics in rural Kentucky execute not cover twelve-monthly eye exams. The grant will progress to technologically sophisticated exams to be had by the side of clinics in Bath, mover, Elliott, Estill, Jackson, Madison, Menifee, Rockcastle and Rowan counties, conveyance digital images of the eyes to UK's Department of Ophthalmology.

The specialists will screen the images meant for cataracts, glaucoma, macular erosion, and other retinal abnormalities with the aim of can run to farsightedness loss and loss of sight. They will in addition enter the results into the patient's electronic therapeutic chronicle, meant for reference by other health-care providers. Currently, lone a small part of the results of community-based eye exams are imported into such records.

The company involving the UK ophthalmologists, the university's Kentucky TeleCare, and primary control centers someplace the screenings will be finished, is called the Appalachian Eye Network. It will contact nine counties with a combined population of 206,000. All the counties cover diabetes toll privileged than the inhabitant be more or less. The project is likely to screen 4,860 intimates completed the three-year expression of the grant.

"Our goal is to contact patients with diabetes and folks with far above the ground hazard factors meant for diabetes who execute not find twelve-monthly eye exams and help reveal potentially devastating eye disease so it can be treated or else the long-suffering loses their farsightedness," assumed fleece Sprang, director of Kentucky TeleCare. "I believe we cover the opportunity to save people’s farsightedness and coins lives."

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