[Retinal vascular lesions in diabetic retinopathy]

The paper presents the vascular morphopathological lesions in diabetic retinopathy. We have initiated a comparative study between normal eye and ocular globes preserved from patients with diabetic retinopathy in different stages of evolution that were fixed and stained by classic histological techniques. We have focus on the histopathological examinations on arterial and venous morphology, in different retinal areas (central and peripheral). The vascular lesions were demonstrated at all types of vessels, capillaries, arterioles, venues and they were correlated with the evolutive stage of the disease. In principal they consisted in thickness of the basal membrane, the degeneration of pericytes, the proliferation of the endothelial cells, microaneurysms, neovessels and vascular hyalinization. The diabetes has increased the death of capillary cells and retinal neurons by a very near apoptosis process.