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. 1999 Sep;83(9):1042–1045. doi: 10.1136/bjo.83.9.1042

Diabetic versus non-diabetic colour vision after cataract surgery

L Kessel 1, A Alsing 1, M Larsen 1
PMCID: PMC1723195  PMID: 10460772

Abstract

AIMS—To examine whether the colour vision abnormalities found in phakic patients with diabetes mellitus is preserved after removal of the lens by cataract surgery.
METHODS—21 diabetic (16 IDDM and five NIDDM) and 19 non-diabetic patients of comparable age, postoperative visual acuity, and sex distribution, all aphakic or pseudophakic following cataract surgery, had their monocular colour vision examined using the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test. The fundus status of the diabetic patients ranged from no retinopathy to photocoagulation treated proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Patients with macular oedema were specifically excluded from the study.
RESULTS—The error scores of both the diabetic (mean 146 (SD 94)) and the non-diabetic patients (83 (79)) did not deviate significantly from the age related normal range. The error score in the diabetic group was significantly higher than in the non-diabetic group (p=0.02) but the amplitude of the difference was small in comparison with previous studies of phakic subjects. The error scores in the diabetic group were not correlated with the degree of retinopathy (p>0.2).
CONCLUSION—After cataract surgery only a minor difference exists between the colour vision scores of diabetic and non-diabetic patients. This indicates that accelerated yellowing of the lens in diabetes is the predominant cause of the colour vision anomaly found in phakic diabetic patients.



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Figure 1  .

Figure 1  

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Scatter plot of Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue colour vision error scores in aphakic or pseudophakic diabetic patients (crosses) and aphakic or pseudophakic non-diabetic patients (triangles). The upper normal range for phakic subjects (mean + 2 SD) is also shown according to Verriest11 (diamonds).

Figure 2  .

Figure 2  

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Farnsworth-Munsell 100 colour vision error scores in standard diagrammatic presentation. Mean scores for the 21 aphakic or pseudophakic diabetic patients (left) and the 19 aphakic or psedudophakic non-diabetic patients (right). In both groups a significant preponderance of errors is found in the blue-yellow axis (p=0.001 for the diabetic group and p=0.002 for the non-diabetic group).

Figure 3  .

Figure 3  

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Farnsworth-Munsell 100 colour vision error scores in relation to chronological age in a group of phakic diabetic patients examined by Bresnick et al2 (excluding subjects with macular oedema). Markers indicate patients with no diabetic retinopathy (squares), microaneurisms and exudates (triangles), and proliferative retinopathy (solid circles). The upper normal range is also shown (mean +2 SD) according to Verriest11 (diamonds).

Figure 4  .

Figure 4  

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Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue colour vision error scores in a group of phakic diabetic patients examined by Bresnick et al2 (same patients as in Fig 3) shown in relation to the apparent lens age calculated by transforming chronological age and diabetes duration to equivalent healthy lens age to account for the accelerated accumulation of brown chromophores in the diabetic lens.8 14 Markers indicate patients with no diabetic retinopathy (squares), microaneurisms and exudates (triangles), and proliferative retinopathy (solid circles). The upper normal range is also shown (mean +2 SD) according to Verriest11 (diamonds).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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