Full Panretinal Photocoagulation and Early Vitrectomy Improve Prognosis of Florid Diabetic Retinopathy

Florid diabetic retinopathy (FDR): a long-term follow-up study

“…Other reports [1,2,9,11,14,15,16,17,18,20] underline the importance of the severe, diffuse retinal ischemia, associated in FDR with voluminous new vessels and marked, widespread blood-retina barrier breakdown.…”

“…The emphasis nowadays is on early diagnosis of FDR, and prompt panretinal laser treatments and pars-plana vitrectomy are the treatments of choice to reduce the high risk of blindness [9,11,17,20].…”

“…The main clinical characteristics of this form of proliferative DR are the young age of the patients, the prevalence of females, bilaterality, and the rapid and "horrible" [16] course which may hamper laser treatment and lead to blindness in a short time. This form has therefore been defined "rapid, bleeding and blinding" or "florid" DR (FDR) [1,2,9,11,14,15,17,18,20].…”

“…Most authors underline the importance of early diagnosis and consider prompt panretinal laser photocoagulation and pars-plana vitrectomy the treatment of choice to limit blindness in FDR [9,11,17,20]. Growing experience with laser photocoagulation, advances in vitreoretinal surgical techniques and intraoperative endolaser application have improved the potential for managing FDR [3,5,10,12,13,19,23,24,25,26,27].…”

“…Few data are available as yet on the long-term outcome in diabetic patients with FDR after prompt laser treatment and/or vitreoretinal surgery [9].…”