That's the finding of a new survey led by Johns Hopkins University, published in the current Archives of Ophthalmology. The researchers focused on Hispanics because their rate of diabetes is especially high - 1.9 times the rate in non-Hispanic white people - and because for some, the language barrier is an impediment to good care. One in five Hispanics over 40 has diabetes, and almost half of those have diabetic retinopathy - a condition that may be characterized by the swelling and leaking of blood vessels in the eye.

The researchers interviewed 553 Hispanic residents of Baltimore, 204 diabetics and 349 without the disease. Diabetics were more likely than non-diabetics to know that eye disease was a potential consequence of the condition. Still, only 36 percent of newly diagnosed diabetics knew that; the percentage climbed to 52 percent among those who'd known they had diabetes for more than a year. Just 30 percent of the diabetics had been to the eye doctor in the previous year.