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Are you being distracted by nondescript, phantom-like disturbances in your visual field that seem to disappear the moment you try to focus on them? Maybe you’ve even turned to Google in an attempt to understand what’s going on and what to do about it.
If so, you’ve come to the right place! At OCLI, we’re familiar with these visual disturbances and can successfully treat them with a simple, painless, non-invasive procedure.
The name for the squiggly lines, amorphous spots, or even “cobwebby” mesh works is myodesopsia, but most people call them floaters because they appear to float across your visual field in whatever direction you’re looking.
What exactly are floaters?
Picture sitting in a room next to a window through which the sun is shining. Imagine there are highly visible water spots or smudges on the window so that when the light shines through it, shadows are cast in the shape of these water spots or smudges. This is essentially what floaters are – shadows cast by occlusions in your eye.
The inside of your eyeball is filled with a transparent gel called vitreous fluid. With age, this gel can become occluded, and as light enters the eye, these occlusions cast shadows on the retina, causing you to see floaters. Floaters are not optical illusions but entoptic phenomenon — actual physical occlusions in your eye. They can appear unexpectedly and are sometimes accompanied by flashes of light or a loss of peripheral vision.
Who is most likely to experience floaters?
Since floaters are most often a symptom of age-related occlusions in the vitreous fluid (or detachment of this fluid from other parts of the eye), floaters are most commonly experienced by people over 50, though it’s possible they can occur at any age. Floaters are also more common in people who are nearsighted, have undergone cataract removal or YAG laser surgery, or who have suffered from inflammation within the eye.
How are floaters treated?
Today, floaters can be easily and effectively treated, but this wasn’t always the case. In the past, when floaters became severe enough to significantly compromise a person’s vision, vitrectomy was the only available solution.
Vitrectomy is a surgical procedure in which the vitreous fluid was removed and replaced with a saline solution. Vitrectomy comes with a wide range of potentially serious side effects including cataracts, increased eye pressure, lens damage, retinal detachment, and infections.
But today, you can breathe easy because treatment for floaters has dramatically evolved and become safer than ever. Thanks to the development of FDA tested-and-approved laser treatment, floaters can now be precisely targeted, painlessly vaporized, and naturally reabsorbed back into the eye. This non-invasive approach is known as vitreolysis, and it has an incredibly high rate of satisfaction and an equally low rate of complications. It is now performed by our doctors as an in-office procedure here at OCLI!
Ready to say goodbye to those pesky floaters?
At OCLI, New Jersey’s premier eye care specialists, we offer state-of-the-art treatment for floaters and any other eye care need. If you’re ready to say goodbye to those pesky floaters or would simply like more information about any of our services, give us a call today and see why we’re known as the most comprehensive and friendliest eye care providers around!
