Materials and Methods: Both eyes of 32 type 2 diabetes patients who were diagnosed as early proliferative diabetic retinopathy were included in the study. Each patient underwent panretinal laser photocoagulation treatment for a total of three sessions using argon green laser for one eye and the dye yellow laser for the fellow eye. Each eye underwent a total of 1800-2000 laser burns with a spot size of 500 microns. Complete ophthalmological examinations of each eye were performed before and 1 and 3 months following the laser treatment. Color vision and visual field analysis of the subjects were repeated 3 months after the laser treatment. Statistical analysis of the study was performed using Mann Whitney U test, Wilcoxon signed rank test and ANOVA for repeated measures.

Results: There were no significant difference between both laser therapy types in terms of neovascularization regression and the visual acuity (p>0.05). No significant intergroup difference in visual field mean sensitivity were noted before(p:0.06) and after (p:0.13) the laser treatment. Pain scores were found to be significantly higher in eyes treated with dye yellow laser (p:0.001).

Conclusion: There have been no significant difference between panretinal laser photocoagulation treatments performed using either dye yellow or argon green laser in terms of visual acuity and the functional visual field sensitivity. As dye yellow laser is found to be more painful, panretinal laser photocoagulation treatments using argon laser seems to be more appropriate in treatment of patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Keywords : Diabetic retinopathy, argon laser, dye laser, panretinal photocoagulation