[ANSWER]NURS2024 Assessment 1: Case Report

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Understanding Diabetic Retinopathy and Vision Impairment

Mrs Summers’s primary medical diagnosis is diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy is a diabetic complication characterised by impaired vision function (Shah & Gardner 2017). Patients with this complication typically report patchy and blurred vision that makes it difficult for them to perform activities like reading and driving. The pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy involves diabetes mellitus, which is the major risk factor for the complication, with patients who have lived with diabetes for longer being at the greatest risk (Corcostegui et al. 2017).

A common clinical manifestation of diabetes is hyperglycaemia, which is involved in the microvascular damage that eventually causes vision loss (Duh, Sun & Stitt 2017). This damage is preceded by several metabolic pathways, notably the polyol, hexosamine and protein kinase C pathways as well as glucose accumulation (Wang & Lo 2018). Blood vessels in the retina respond to hyperglycaemia through dilation, which causes changes in the flow of blood (Wang & Lo 2018). The changes, which are a form of metabolic autoregulation, raise the rate of metabolism in the retina in individuals with diabetes.

Another early event in the pathophysiology of diabetic retinopathy is pericyte loss, which is also triggered by hyperglycaemia (Duh, Sun & Stitt 2017). As pericytes support the capillaries structurally, their apoptosis results in damage to the walls of the capillaries, causing the formation of microaneurysm. Typically characterised by small dots in the eye, microaneurysm is the first clinical manifestation of diabetic retinopathy (Corcostegui et al. 2017). Besides pericyte apoptosis…[Buy Full Answer for Just USD 9: 2447 WORDS]

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