Retinal Vessel Measurements as Clinically Useful Predictors in Veterans

Diabetic complications are an important source of blindness and mortality among Veterans. Their occurrence is unpredictable because of the highly variable effect of factors such as weight, diet and exercise. Improved prediction of diabetes complications has the potential to improve the care for Veterans with diabetes, especially if this can be done without any extra effort for the Veterans or their caretakers. All Veterans with diabetes in VHA are required to undergo annual retinal photography to screen for current diabetic retinopathy. The investigators have recently developed an automated, precise, fast, novel tool for measuring retinal vessels in these images. Manual measurement of retinal vessels has shown that these can predict future -not current- development of hypertension and also diabetic retinopathy. If the investigators can confirm that their tool can flag those Veterans at increased risk for developing these diabetes complications, this will allow earlier intervention and prevention. Because the tool only uses the images that are being taken anyway, there is no extra effort for either the Veteran or VA staff.