Hundreds of people with diabetes will keep their sight thanks to the pioneering work of North-East scientists. Health Editor Barry Nelson reports.

A NORTH-EAST research project that started with a handful of scientists and a second-hand ambulance is dramatically improving the care of people with diabetes.

When Newcastle University scientists developed a new way to screen the retinas of diabetes patients in the mid-Eighties, they toured the city in an old ambulance, checking people for signs of sight-threatening complications.

The project was so successful in preventing blindness that a national eye screening service, using the same approach pioneered by Profesor Roy Taylor from Newcastle University, will soon cover every part of the country.

Every year in the UK, more than 2,000 people with eye problems caused by diabetes go blind. It is hoped that the new national service will have a huge impact on this total.

Mark Thompson, 40, from Newcastle, whose sight was saved after he was screened by the Tyneside team, certainly hopes so. The Newcastle medics were able to spot and treat a problem which could have led to him going blind in one eye.

Mark, who works at Newcastle General Hospital as a maintenance assistant, says: “This treatment is a great benefit to people suffering from diabetes.

“I am a keen cyclist and that could have been affected if I had gone blind in one eye. I would definitely have had to stop driving and my work would have been affected.

“This has definitely been a massive thing for me, I’m so grateful to the team at Newcastle. It is a great breakthrough and I would urge anyone with diabetes to get checked out.

“You hear some horror stories of people going completely blind. I was not that bad – but I could have been if I hadn’t been treated early.”

Research by experts from Newcastle Biomedicine, a partnership between Newcastle University and Newcastle NHS Foundation Trust, shows that annual eye screening backed up with effective treatment has a dramatic effect. In the whole of England and Wales, diabetes is the commonest cause of blindness in adults – but not in Newcastle, where the retinal screening programme started in 1986.

“Blindness is the worst fear of anyone with diabetes. This is the first demonstration that sight can be saved by regular expert screening,”

says Professor Taylor..

“I am convinced that the benefits of year-on-year retinal screening will be seen nationwide. Newcastle has led the way in saving sight for many people with diabetes.”

Newcastle research more than 20 years ago showed that a special retinal camera was very good at detecting problems which required immediate laser treatment. A mobile unit – a second-hand ambulance – visited diabetes clinics in and around the city, and the study ran for two years.

It showed that the screening was much better than expected and also that mobile units were cost-effective and practical. Prof Taylor, who led this research, was then awarded £150,000 from the Allied Dunbar Foundation to fund 11 further screening vans, working in areas from Hemel Hempstead to Dundee, and Belfast to Norwich.

THIS groundbreaking clinical development, directed from Newcastle, has led to the creation of a national eye screening programme throughout the UK.

Ten years ago, fewer than half of health districts in England and Wales had any organised eye screening for people with diabetes.

Now districts have programmes to the national standard, and the benefits will be seen nationwide in a few years.

The service is now provided as part of the services of Newcastle and North Tyneside PCT. It is delivered from the Diabetes Centre at Newcastle General Hospital and the laser therapy which saves sight is given at the Ophthalmology Department at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, also in Newcastle.

Theresa Dickinson, 45, of Seaton Sluice, Northumberland, was not as lucky as Mark. She went blind when she was in her 20s, but believes the new technique could have saved her sight.

“I think this new screening programme will be fantastic,” she says.

“It is a shame it will be too late for me.”

“I remember being told there was nothing they could do to save my sight. I didn’t cry, I was just in shock.

I got home and realised all my plans for life would not happen.

“If there had been something like this available, I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone blind.”

■ For more information about diabetes, go to diabetes.org.uk