Pregnancy

For many people pregnancy is a happy time.  It can pose some challenges for people who already have diabetes before they becoming pregnant.

One challenge is that diabetic eye disease can come on, or worsen, more quickly while you are pregnant. As a result, more people develop problems with their vision during pregnancy than at other times in their life with diabetes.

To protect your eyesight the NHS recommends more regular diabetes eye screening during pregnancy than just the standard annual test. Indeed, the NHS regards people with diabetes who are pregnant at higher than average risk of developing sight threatening eye disease.   Despite the coronavirus situation, it recommends that everyone who already had diabetes when they became pregnant still has regular diabetes eye screening. This is because the benefits (preventing loss of vision) outweigh the very small risk of getting coronavirus on the day you are screened.

To keep your risk of losing sight at a minimum please do come to your diabetes eye screening appointments, or call us (020 8510 5911) to choose a date and time that suits you. 

If you already have diabetes and become pregnant, please let us know so that we can arrange the more frequent checks that you need.