Survival rate after vitreous surgery in patients with diabetic retinopathy.

We studied factors affecting the survival rate after vitreous surgery in 73 patients with diabetic retinopathy, who had undergone vitreous surgery between 1982 and 1987, according to the life-table theory and multivariate analysis. The 5-year survival rate was 84.8%; the mean age at death was 62.1 +/- 7.1 (mean +/- SD) years; the mean postoperative survival time was 34.0 +/- 25.2 months; the most common cause of death having been cardiovascular disease, which occurred in 5 of the 13 (38.5%) patients who had died. Patients with triopathy essentially require very careful systemic management, because this state was definitively associated with a decline in postoperative survival.