Electron Microscopy of Normal and Diabetic Retinal Capillaries

Abstract

The technical necessity of obtaining fresh material for electron microscopy limits severely the availability of suitable specimens for the study of diabetic retinopathy. Eyes which are enucleated during life represent such advanced disease or incorporate such complications as to make them valueless from the point of view of early pathologic changes; and postmortem material is usually obtained so long after death that the ultrastructural changes are invalid. The best source of material for the study of early changes in diabetic retinopathy is, therefore, autopsy material obtained promptly after death. The present report presents an electron microscopic and histologic study of the retinas of two diabetic patients and of two nondiabetic patients from whom it was possible to obtain specimens that permitted prompt fixation. The small number of recent electron microscopic studies of retinal vessels^1-3 encourages us to report our findings on the few retinal vessel preparations we have examined