Service description
Dr. Millie Fell is a diabetic eye specialist in Brooklyn, specializing in diagnosing and treating diabetic retinal disease known as diabetic retinopathy with laser therapy. Laser treatment is performed in the comfort of our state of the art office.
Why are diabetics at risk for eye conditions?
In diabetes, high sugar levels in the blood damage blood vessels throughout the entire body including your eye. In particular, high blood glucose levels cause damage to the blood vessels in the retina of the eye. The retina lines the back of your eye like wallpaper, and is like the film in a camera—it detects the light entering your eye and turns it into pictures for your brain to see. When the retina's blood vessels are damaged, the retina stops working properly, and sight can be lost.
After being exposed to high sugar levels for a long time, the blood vessels in the retina develop some weak spots. These weak spots often pooch out like bubbles along the blood vessels, and these are called microaneurysms. Sometimes the microaneurysms rupture, and blood spills into the retina to form small dot hemorrhages. Your retina will eventually clear the blood away, but some debris is often left behind—these clumps of debris are called hard exudates. Altogether, these changes—microaneurysms, dot hemorrhages, and hard exudates—are called background diabetic eye disease .
How do I know if I am suffering from diabetes-related eye conditions?
Background and early proliferative diabetic retinopathy have no symptoms. The only way to know if you have these changes—and need laser therapy to save your sight—is to visit your eye specialist. Brooklyn Brighton Eye Ophthalmology Center recommends that people with diabetes have their eyes examined at least once a year to assure that they do not have early damage that threatens their vision.
If it is caught early—before your vision is damaged—proliferative diabetic eye disease can be treated with laser therapy to save your vision. Once the vision is lost, it is very hard to get it back.
What is the course of treatment for diabetic eye diseases?
Evaluation of Diabetic Retinopathy is performed with fluorescein angiography at our offices. During this procedure a yellow vegetable dye is injected into a vein in the arm. This dye circulates to the back of the eye. Photographs are taken of the retina to detect the extent of the diabetic disease and to guide laser treatment.
Flourescein angiogram
An eye specialist in our Brooklyn office performs laser treatment of diabetic eye disease. During this treatment, a laser is used to close bleeding or leaking blood vessels. Sometimes a laser is applied in order to stabilize the retina and cause abnormal blood vessels, which tend to bleed more easily, to disappear.
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