Eye Floaters: What AreThey?
By Lu Baker
Takeaways
People see eye floaters as small specks, cobwebs, or clouds moving in their field of vision.
Nearly everybody has floaters or will develop them at some point of life.
They are harmless, and they usually are just bits of membrane.
Some of the people call them floaters; the Eye doctors call them "vitreous opacities." Vitreous floaters (eye floaters, vitreous opacities) are tiny, cloudy, clumps of cells that appear in the otherwise clear fluid (vitreous) that fills the back three-fourths of the eye. People see eye floaters as small specks, cobwebs, or clouds moving in their field of vision. A woman called Emily Flynn, has even said that hers are like little fuzz balls, and that she has flown half way around the world to have them removed.
After more than 100 pinpoint zaps from a laser beam during about a half hour visit to a Northern Virginia office park, the fuzz balls was gone. The surgeon, Dr. John Karickhoff has done this same procedure over 1,400 times in the past fifteen years and he claims a very successful rate of around more than 90 percent, with minimal risk of any complications. Still many of the ophthalmologists have never even heard of this procedure and even most would recommend against it. Nearly everybody has floaters or will develop them at some point of life, especially older and the nearsighted people.
These funny shaped floaters are like specks or snakes, which just float through a person's field of vision, and are most easily seen when you look against a light back ground like a blue sky or a white wall. I had visited my eye doctor years ago when I noticed these floaters. It scared me, but the doctor told me then that it was a teenage disease. So I just left it at that, it doesn't bother me now as much. It is right when the back ground is light, that you really notice them. Mine were the snake like floaters that went back and forth right in your eye path of reading. Floaters come and go with eye movements, such as blinking. They follow eye movements, but lag behind and float to a halt a few seconds after the eyes stop moving.
These images are most obviously appear when looking at a bright, uniform field of vision, such as a white wall or a clear sky. People may experience one or several floaters in one eye or both. Floaters are not the same as the spots you see after looking at intense light such as from a flashbulb. They are harmless, and they usually are just bits of membrane that have become dislodged from other parts of the eye. Karickhoff has estimated that around 95 percent of the people who have these floaters ought to leave them alone. But for that 5 percent, they can be a legitimate problem.
Some musicians have said that they couldn't read their sheet music quickly enough because the floaters would get in the way. Karickhoff has tried for many years to get the procedure accepted into the medical mainstream. This really could ruin a patient's quality of life. Only a handful of doctors in the United States, maybe a few as two, regularly treat floaters with a laser surgery. American Academy of Ophthalmology, said that most of the ophthalmologists believe that the procedure is unnecessary. The Ophthalmologist uses the laser to clear vision, but most experts say it is a waste of time.
If the patients insist on the treatment, then the laser treatment can be a better choice than the more common alternative, a vitrectomy, which involves removing most or all of the eyeballs internal fluid. Many of the eye doctors are too dismissive of how irritating a floater can be. Just compare it to trying to read a book while holding a pencil directly in front of one of your eyes. This could just be so irritating and maybe you would feel it will drive you up a wall. In Emily Flynn's case, her optometrist in New Zealand told her that the floaters were common and not harmful, and that she should learn to live with it. So she read up on it and learned about Dr. Karickhoff from his Web site.
Karickhoff had said that he knows first hand that the floaters can be troubling, and that he had what he called "whopper" of a floater in his own eye. The doctor was very skeptical when, on a Florida vacation, he saw a newspaper ad touting laser surgery for floaters. So then he sat in on a surgery preformed by another ophthalmologist and later allows this eye doctor to operate on his eye, and the procedure was a success. Not long after, Karickhoff began performing the procedures himself. Both eye doctors have since operated on thousands of patients. Karickhoff has said that he declines to treat patients who are making a mountain out of a molehill, because some of the patients will almost never be satisfied. The eye floaters can irritate some people, and others they don't notice too much at all. Your eye doctor will know what is best for you, if you have floaters, because your eye doctor may see if it may be more serious and how to treat.
More resources
www.eyefloaters.com
