Use of personalised risk-based screening schedules to optimise workload and sojourn time in screening programmes for diabetic retinopathy: A retrospective cohort study

by Andreas Ochs, Stuart McGurnaghan, Mike W. Black, Graham P. Leese, Sam Philip, Naveed Sattar, Caroline Styles, Sarah H. Wild, Paul M. McKeigue, Helen M. Colhoun, on behalf of the Scottish Diabetes Research Network Epidemiology Group and the Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Collaborative BackgroundNational guidelines in most countries set screening intervals for diabetic retinopathy (DR) that are insufficiently informed by contemporary incidence rates. This has unspecified implications for interval disease risks (IDs) of referable DR, disparities in ID between groups or individuals, time spent in referable state before screening (sojourn time), and workload. We explored the effect of various screening schedules on these outcomes and developed an open-access interactive policy tool informed by contemporary DR incidence rates. Methods and findingsScottish Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programme data from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2016 were linked to diabetes registry data. This yielded 128,606 screening examinations in people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and 1,384,360 examinations in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Among those with T1D, 47% of those without and 44% of those with referable DR were female, mean diabetes duration was 21 and 23 years, respectively, and mean age was 26 and 24 years, respectively. Among those with T2D, 44% of those without and 42% of those with referable DR were female, mean diabetes duration was 9 and 14 years, respectively, and mean age was 58...
Source: PLoS Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Source Type: research