To investigate the effect of high myopia and cataract surgery on the grading of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and their roles in the correlation between DR and chronic kidney disease (CKD).
A total of 1,063 eyes of 1,063 diabetic patients were enrolled. We conducted binary and multiple multivariate regressions to analyze the ocular and systemic risk factors of DR. Based on the presence of myopia and history of cataract surgery, we divided the cases into four subgroups, namely those with high myopia, with the history of cataract surgery, with both conditions, and with neither, then determined the correlation between the stages of DR and CKD in each subgroup.
In the binary analysis, high myopia was identified as the protective factor for DR odds ratio (OR): 0.312 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.195–0.500,
High myopia was a protective factor, whereas cataract surgery is a risk factor for DR, and both factors showed stronger effects throughout the (natural disease) grading of DR. The stages of DR and CKD showed a higher correlation after adjustment of the ocular confounding factors.