Retinal Vessel Measurements as Clinically Useful Predictors in Veterans

Completed

Conditions studied: Diabetes

In brief

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.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT01772173

Run by

VA Office of Research and Development

People needed

800

Starts

2013-02-01

Expected to finish

2017-03-01

Last updated by the study team

2017-05-08

Who can join

Age: 18 and older, up to 99. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Veterans with diabetes
• from the Greater LA and Iowa City screening programs
• who were imaged at least 3 years ago for DR screening, and did not have hypertension (AHA definition) at that time

You may not qualify if…

• random sample of 500 Veterans with diabetes
• from the Greater LA and Iowa City screening programs
• who were imaged at least 3 years ago for DR screening, and did not have hypertension (AHA definition) at that time

Where it is running

• Iowa City VA Health Care System, Iowa City, IA — Iowa City, Iowa, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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