Authors' reply: Comment to course of diabetic retinopathy before and after renal transplantation.

Abstract

We thank the authors for their interest in our paper “The effects of renal transplantation on diabetic retinopathy: Clinical course and visual outcomes,”[1] and complement them for excellent suggestions. We agree with them that assessment of metabolic status is of paramount status in monitoring course of diabetic retinopathy (DR) patients. Table 2 in our paper highlights the metabolic parameters in pre- and post-transplant period. As correctly pointed by authors macular edema status was not included in our study. It being a retrospective study, objective documentation of macular status by optical coherence tomography was not available for all patients. Since without proper quantification of edema, it is very difficult to comment on the macular status we decided to exclude it from the study parameters.[2] We agree with the authors on the value of color fundus photography and have already mentioned it as a limitation in our paper. In our study, DR outcome was defined as worsening if there was >2 step increase in the grade of DR or need for intervention such as laser (macular or pan retinal) or vitreoretinal surgery, improvement for <2 step change while stabilization was defined if DR remained within these two limits. Though it is mentioned in the abstract, omission of the improvement parameters in Material and Methods section is regretted.