An ocular clinicopathologic correlative study of six patients from the Diabetic Retinopathy Study

The authors studied the eyes postmortem from six patients who were enrolled in the multicenter Diabetic Retinopathy Study and treated by photocoagulation. All were patients of the Wilmer Institute, The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Of these six patients, four had equal or better vision in the treated eye at their last visit. Two patients had worse vision, due primarily to cystoid macular edema. All but one patient had clinically significant field loss in the treated eye, and this correlated with the retinal damage induced by photocoagulation. This treatment produced local retinal and choroidal effects and did not alter the histopathologic appearance of the anterior segment of the eye.