Use of the RETeval™ Handheld Electroretinogram Device for Assessing the Risk of Diabetic Retinopathy in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes: A Case Report

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the most common and severe ocular complication in diabetes. Significant advances in retinal electrophysiology have emerged in recent years in relation to diabetes-associated eye disease. Growing evidence of neuronal degeneration in DR has been established, most of which comes from electroretinography (ERG) studies. A five-year-old male patient with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D), under treatment since 2021, and a 15-year-old male patient with T1D, under treatment since 2019, underwent ERG testing using the RETeval™ device (LKC Technologies, Inc., Germantown, MD, USA) and the DR program. Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels were measured at regular intervals at the outpatient clinic. The patients obtained DR protocol scores of 21.4 and 26.0, respectively. The median HbA1c during the study period was 6.2% for the first patient and 8.2% for the second. The findings suggest that RETeval could have potential clinical utility in the assessment of visual function and the early detection of diabetic eye changes.