I have researched this in the past but I am not a doctor. I have never read about any treatment other than replacing the vitreous, but who would want to do that? I just ignore them. The more you think about it, the more they will bother you. The only time I ever really notice them anymore is when I am trying to focus with a grain magnifier under the enlarger believe it or not. And when you just reminded me of them.
I have them. Always have. They come and go. If I get one in a bad spot I spin my eyes round and round and they move. That has always fixed it. Seems to spin them off to the side without the centrifuge.
I've been tripping on my floaters for years. I have two kinds. One is stationary in the center of my field of view and worm like, but a closed loop. I've been led to believe that this is structurally related to the optic nerve connection in the back of the eye. Then there are the swimmers that squiggle all over the place after staring at a featureless surface like a clear sky for a minute or two. I've been told that those are actually white blood cells circulating through the capillaries in the retina. I don't know if any of that is true but I would certainly like to find out. The latter are transient and go away as soon as I look at something else but the former does become annoying from time to time during extended loupe focusing. When I see it 'll try to focus on it and then it disappears so I go back to what I was doing and it pops right back up and that goes on over and over again.
My father was similar. He was blind in his right eye due to a detached retina in his late teens and spent most of his life extremely short sighted in the left eye (didn't stop him working professionally as a photographer though).Originally Posted by Alan Gales
A cataract operation which replaced the eye's lens with a plastic lens, all carried out through a tiny incision, gave him near perfect sight from arm's length to infinity. He spent months just walking about looking at things, not believing the difference.
Steve.
I'm 27 and I have a small floater in my left eye about 4 years back till today. It does get annoying, but I've learnt to ignore it.
I try to rest my eyes more often now, and spend less time looking at computer screens. I'd rather look at the ground glass these days.
Getting older isn't for sissies.
The material inside the eye is a gel called vitreous. There is a network of tiny thread-like structures running through the vitreous that attach to the retina at the back of the eye. As we get older, the viscous shrinks. This can put stress on the threads, and lead them to break. One of the symptoms of thread breakage is flashes of light. Also, as they tear away from the retina, they leave bits of debris in the viscous. Those bits of debris are the floaters. There is nothing that can be done about them, and we simply have to live with them. I'll say it again - getting older isn't for sissies.
The problem is that the stress on those threads caused by vitreous shrinkage can also tear away parts of the retina. That's a serious problem, and can lead to loss of vision. Vision loss due to retinal tearing can also occur due to trauma, or as a consequence of diabetes. There are surgical solutions that aren't a lot of fun, and that aren't always successful. I know this because it happened to me.
If you are experiencing floaters, you should see your ophthalmologist soon and regularly. It may be a nuisance, or it could be a precursor of a serious problem.
Floaters don't make you go blind. If you are "going blind" perhaps you have glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, hypertensive retinopathy, cataracts, retinal detachment, astigmatism, occipital CVA, Cushing's Disease, or some other condition.
TYPING IN ALL CAPS HELPS!
Take your Presser Vision eye vitamins and see an eye doctor. Talking about it won't hurt you.
The only thing that going online about it might help is so you can identify who a good eye doctor is in your area. Not that you should believe things online, but sometimes the trends, and number-quality of the referrals, teaching affiliations, status of their training are good starting points in your searching.
You can also interview potential doctors. Besides their personality, the big question is whether they take the philosophy of achieving maximum vision through interactive means (surgery) or if they rather treat aliments avoiding surgery but accepting some diminishment. That'd be what decides it for me. The correct answer would be that, "I would run you through ALL the options, with the positives and negatives and "what-ifs" on the table and openly discussed."
You always have a choice and a good doc is going to explain the risks and give you potential outcomes, worst case, best case, with numbers attached.
Please do keep us informed though.
I am a physician whose very good retinal surgeon says there is nothing to do that remotely justifies the risk.
Still I do wish...
Posts 18 (including the "getting older isn't for sissies") and 19 are exactly what my eye doctors have been telling me for years. The only other advise they've offered is to get used to them and stop reading on-line forums.
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