This book encapsulates what working in diabetic eye disease is all about: the multidisciplinary team. It takes you through the patient pathway, from screening to grading to management of diabetes, as well as management of eye disease, dealing with all parts of the framework.
Although this book is aimed at retinal screeners, it gives a great overview of the retinal screening programme as a whole and provides just the right level of detail about the clinical side of things for students of general medicine, ophthalmology and optometry alike.
As a newly qualified optometrist I was always a bit scared by diabetic eye disease. When looking at fundus pictures I was never sure where to start. This book talks through all the grades of retinopathy and the features to look for, including good photos of examples. It even gives advice to screeners about how to start looking at retinal photos which would be very handy for anyone in the early stages of a career in diabetic eye care.
I found this a very easy read with handy boxes for key messages. The chapters are good to dip in and out of to enable you to target the information you need. Chapters include ‘The basics of diabetes’, ‘Features of diabetic eye disease’ and ‘Treatment’. There are also useful backgrounds about principles of screening and pathways, as well as failsafe procedures and requirements for accreditation for retinal screeners. Although readers may not need to know all the detail of all these aspects, it is useful to have this information to understand how the different elements of diabetic eyecare fit together. If you are after a detailed book about diabetic eye treatments, this may not be the one for you, but for an all-round package of diabetes and eyecare I think it’s a great format.
