[Diabetics with proliferative retinopathy of unusual course (author's transl)]

General experience shows that proliferative diabetic retinopathy leads to blindness within only a short time, in spite of short-term improvements in the clinical picture. Long-lasting remission can occur, but seldom for more than a few years. We have observed 3 patients with proliferative retinopathy in whom remission continued for more than 15 years, in one case even lasting over 20 years. Good, useful vision was maintained during all this time. This was only true of one eye, however, while the other eye rapidly became blind. Of the other forms of angiopathy, little coronary heart disease and no peripheral vascular disease was observed in these patients. There were also no signs of nephropathy, i.e. diabetes-specific glomerular sclerosis. Thus, the total picture of angiopathy seems to be benign. The remission of the retinopathy seems to be in accord with this general trend, although it can perhaps be partly explained by unknown local factors in the eye itself.