The role of the vitreous in diabetic macular edema

The authors assessed retrospectively clinical records of 76 patients (125 eyes) 60 years of age or older with diabetic retinopathy who had undergone a vitreous examination. The groups consisted of 105 eyes (63 patients) with macular edema and 20 eyes (13 patients) without macular edema. Vitreous studies were done using the El Bayadi-Kajiura lens to determine whether or not the posterior vitreous was attached to the retina in the macula. Twenty-one of 105 eyes (20.0%) in the edema group and 11 of 20 eyes (55.0%) in the no-edema group had a detached posterior vitreous. This difference was found to be statistically significant, indicating that diabetic cases without macular edema have a significantly higher rate of posterior vitreous detachment than those with macular edema. This study demonstrates that the vitreous may play a role in diabetic macular edema.