14 November, 2015

Diabetic retinopathy is the major cause of preventable blindness in India

Doctors claim that diabetic retinopathy is one of the biggest causes of preventable blindness among Indian adults. Calling diabetes an uncontrolled disease in India with 65 million cases, the doctors say that at least 40 percent of the severe diabetics will suffer from diabetic retinopathy if steps are not taken to control it. ‘Diabetic retiniopathy is the most dangerous eye disease that a diabetic patient can suffer. Though the disease existed for long, but in the recent years it has emerged as one of the major problems among diabetics,’ said Roshani Gadge, consultant at Shreya Diabetes Centre.

Explaining diabetic retinopathy, she said: ‘It is the result of damage to the tiny blood vessels that nourishes the retina. They leak blood and other fluids that causes swelling of retinal tissue and clouding of vision. The condition usually affects both eyes.’ According to AIIMS statistics, around 50-60 lakh surgeries are conducted in India every year out of which at least 15 lakh surgeries are related to diabetic retinopathy. Gadge said that as diabetes is occurring more among the younger population, these patients live with the disease for almost three decades which makes them more prone to diabetic retinopathy.

Praveen Vashist, additional professor, community ophthalmology at AIIMS, said that to check the actual number of diabetic retinopathies in Delhi, AIIMS had conducted check-ups of 10,000 people, out of which 1,246 were found suffering from diabetic retinopathy and had almost become partially blind. ‘We had set up 166 camps across Delhi, specially in the slums. Of the total number of people suffering from diabetic retinopathy, 550 were brought to AIIMS and provided free treatment,’ Vashist told IANS. Pradeep Singh of Safdarjung Hospital said that though not every diabetic becomes prone to diabetic retinopathy, they do suffer from other eye problems such as cataract. ‘A longer-term effect of diabetes is that the lens of your eye can go cloudy, which again needs surgery,’ he said.  

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

14.11.2015

Death of a parent in childhood increases suicide risk

A new study found a study of children from three Scandinavian countries who were followed for up to 40 years, that death of a parent in childhood may increase long-term risk of suicide. ‘Our study points to the early mitigation of distress to reduce the risk of suicidal behaviour among children who had a parent who died during childhood,’ the study noted. For the study, Mai-Britt Guldin from Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues used nationwide register data from 1968 to 2008 in Denmark, Sweden and Finland (for a total of 7.3 million individuals) to identify 189,094 children whose parent died before the child turned 18 (the bereaved group).

For comparison, the authors matched each bereaved child with 10 other children who did not experience the stress related to the death of a parent to examine the long-term risks of suicide after parental death (the reference group). Both groups were followed for up to 40 years. During the follow-up period, 0.14 percent of individuals from the bereaved group commiitted suicide as compared to 0.07 percent from the reference group. The researchers also found that the risk of suicide was higher among boys as compared to girls. The study was published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.  

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

14.11.2015

Your values never fail you. You fail your values

Kevin Sparks Janeway