Introduction: Current ISPAD guidelines recommend biennial diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening starting at age 11 yrs with type 1 diabetes (T1D) duration 2-5 yrs. Growing evidence suggesting less frequent screening.

Methods: DR was ETDRS graded and progress assed by Markov chain model analysis. Retinal photos were from 2,169 patients (baseline (mean±SD): age 13.1±2.1 yrs, HbA1c 8.5±1.4%, 5.4±2.9 yrs T1D, follow-up 5.3±3.6 yrs) who attended the T1D clinic at least twice in 1990-2018.

Results: In 11/2,169 patients DR progressed to severe non-proliferative (SNP) DR or above. See tables 1 and 2 below for detailed results.

Conclusions: Our data support less frequent DR screening in T1D youth without any DR. Although DR progression is generally slow, poor glycaemic control greatly accelerates it.

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Disclosure

A.S. Januszewski: None. V. Velayutham: None. P.Z. Benitez-Aguirre: None. M.E. Craig: None. G. Liew: None. Y. Cho: None. A. Jenkins: Advisory Panel; Self; Abbott, Medtronic. Research Support; Self; Abbott, GlySens Incorporated, Medtronic, Sanofi-Aventis. K.C. Donaghue: None.

© 2020 by the American Diabetes Association
2020
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