Extending diabetic eye screening to two years could risk sight loss, study finds

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Extending eye screening for diabetic people from every year to every two years could heighten the risk of blindness, researchers have said. Introducing a requirement to report by age and ethnicity for selected screening standards would enable regular, prospective monitoring of changes to service delivery, so disparities do not remain unrecognised Dr Parul Desai and Dr Samantha De Silva Over eight years they tracked the number of people that developed diabetic retinopathy, along with their ethnicity and age. In a linked editorial, Dr Parul Desai and Dr Samantha De Silva, of Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Oxford Eye Hospital and University of Oxford, respectively, called for “a review and update” of the NHS diabetic eye screening programme “to take account of the differential impact among subgroups of the population eligible for diabetic eye screen”. They added: “Introducing a requirement to report by age and ethnicity for selected screening standards would enable regular, prospective monitoring of changes to service delivery, so disparities do not remain unrecognised, and provide information for responsive action on any unwarranted variation… because one size may not always fit all.” A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We’ve accepted the recommendation of the independent scientific experts at the UK National Screening Committee which was based on a wide study of existing evidence, including 25 independent studies.