Eye Floaters – What, Why and How to Treat?

The small moving spots which are sometimes seen in the focus area of vision is known as eye floaters. These do not hamper your vision, but the sudden opaque spots are quite annoying and they are especially seen while you view something with a very bright backdrop like the vast blue sky or spotless white paper.

eye floaters treatment

These floating spots tend to move as your vision will move and they dart away when you try and look at them directly. They are always not black or grey dots; but can also appear as threadlike strands, squiggly lines, ringed lines or cobwebs.

Causes of Eye Floaters

In majority cases, it’s seen that eye floaters are caused due to speckles of a protein known as collagen. The black portion of the eye is made of the gel base called vitreous humor. With ageing, this gel base and its numerous fine collagen fibers continually shrink and get accumulated.

These masses create a disturbance in the amount of light that enters the retina or the light receptive tissue located behind the eye. Thus, eye floaters are formed. It does not have any relation with age and can occur anytime between ages 50 and 75; although its more common in people who had cataract surgery or are near sighted. Eye floaters very rarely occur from eye diseases, injuries, diabeties, or eye tumours.

How to Treat Eye Floaters?

If the eye floaters are in the benign stage and just occurred for few days, you don’t actually need any treatment at all. However, if it’s been a couple of weeks or months, you might require medical treatment. One of the most common and natural methods to shift eye floaters is manoeuvring an eye movement technique – Look up and down as soon as these floaters appear, this movement is more effective than looking from one side to the other.

For serious and dense eye floaters that block your vision; your doctor might prescribe a surgical course of action called a vitrectomy. During this surgery, the vitreous liquid and its afloat debris (the main cause of eye floaters) are carefully removed and restored with a saline solution. However, this procedure does have certain side effects like retinal tears, retinal detachment and cataracts. Thus, unless your eye floaters are really affecting your vision the doctor might not take up this surgical risk.

Are Eye Floaters a sign of Danger?

Eye floaters usually appear with ageing thus you can be assured that it’s not any fatal disease or sign of any serious optic ailment. However, it’s better if you can visit an ophthalmologist if you are developing symptoms of eye floaters because if they are accompanied by flashing lights it can signify retinal tear or detachment. It can also lead to permanent loss of side vision.

Photo Credit By: naturaleyefloaterstreatment.com