Diabetic retinopathy study. Data acquisition and its reliability.

The documentation of ophthalmologic data of patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR) is described. Special attention has been paid to the standardized grading of opacities of the dioptric media as well as to the assessment of classified arteriolar abnormalities. The reproducibility of these judgments was determined by a double evaluation test. The reliability of the assessment of classified retinal lesions on panorama fundus photographs was reported elsewhere. A further section of the questionnaire that concerns the documentation of the patient's history, of general medical and laboratory findings, and of reasons why individual patients "drop out" from the study, is described in this contribution.