Can you remove eye floaters

Many people develop eye floaters. These are spots, rings, or web-like lines that are grayish, black, or shadowlike shapes in your vision. You may not be able to look at them directly, but as you move your eyes, they will shift or drift back and forth.

It may seem like these shapes are in front of you, but they are actually inside your eye, as they are particles in the vitreous humor that makes up the bulk of your eye. When they move in front of your retina, they block light so you can see them move back and forth. Eye floaters are associated with the shrinking of the vitreous humor as you age, but they can also indicate potential problems with your eye health. Keep your optometrist or ophthalmologist informed about eye floaters, especially if you suddenly see a lot of them or their appearance is accompanied by light flashes, pain or discomfort, or nausea and headaches.

To understand eye floaters , it can help to understand the structure of the eye. In a normal, younger eye, the vitreous humor has a gel-like texture.

With higher order myopia nearsightedness , aging, some medications, chronic illnesses, and surgical procedures, the vitreous humor will change. The inside will become more liquid, and sometimes this is not thick enough to support the heavier gel on the outside.

The internal changes can lead to some eye floaters, with more developing as the vitreous humor pulls away from the retina. If you develop eye floaters, this is not necessarily a problem. Report them during your regular eye exam. This can help your optometrist or ophthalmologist to manage your eye health by monitoring for specific conditions.

Common eye floater symptoms include:. These are normal, especially if you are middle-aged or older. However, you should see a doctor if eye floaters:. The symptoms listed above indicate a tear in your retina, which may be due to retinal detachment, shrinking of the vitreous humor, or other causes. This necessitates immediate attention to avoid vision loss.

Among people who suddenly developed eye floaters , About half of people who have a retinal tear will eventually develop retinal detachment if the problem is not treated.

Floaters and flashes both have age-related causes and can occur simultaneously, but they are different. When you have eye floaters, you see objects that are not present. In contrast, eye flashes usually appear as lightning streaks in front of your eyes, instead of seeing unreal objects like bugs or shapes.

You may experience flashes when you rub your eye, stimulating the retina. The light you see during those flashes is not real, either. When you pull the retina, your brain interprets the effect as a sighting of a star, a bright spot or lightning. Some of the questions they may ask include:. Your eye care provider will also check to see if you have any retinal tears in case the floaters are caused by a more serious problem.

If floaters are a problem you keep experiencing, your optometrist or ophthalmologist may recommend that you receive regular eye exams. Eye floaters caused by a medical condition will be referred to an ophthalmologist for further evaluation and surgical treatment. Although rare, floaters in the eye can occasionally be caused by a serious condition called retinal detachment.

When the retina gets torn off or pulled away from the eye, it can cause:. Retinal detachment is a serious condition that can result in permanent vision loss if left untreated, so you should contact an ophthalmologist right away if you experience any of the above symptoms.

Your ophthalmologist will look for retinal detachment by performing a dilated eye exam , where they put drops in your eye to dilate the pupil and look for any changes in your retina.

If a diagnosis of retinal detachment is confirmed, they may perform pneumatic retinopexy, vitrectomy, or scleral buckle surgery to put the retina back into place. The most common and safest way to get rid of eye floaters is to do nothing. Floaters in the eye caused by aging are permanent, but they become less noticeable over time. They will, however, continue to monitor the floaters with regular eye exams to keep track of how your vitreous is shrinking and to prevent any serious eye problems from developing later.

How long it takes an eye floater to go away depends on the cause and severity of the floaters. They may go away in a matter of days or weeks. Moving your eyes up and down or right to left may get them to vanish temporarily. A surgery called a vitrectomy can be performed to remove floaters in the eye.

This is reserved for the most severe cases where there are so many floaters that it's difficult to see. The surgery involves small incisions to remove the vitreous in the eye completely and replace it with a substance similar to the vitreous.

The procedure could potentially cause retinal detachment, retinal tears, cataracts, or damage to your eyesight.

There is also a possibility that some floaters may remain in the eye. Due to these concerns, ophthalmologists will discuss the risks and benefits of this elective surgery if you are considering this treatment option for your eye floaters.

While troublesome, eye floaters are generally not a cause for concern and have minimal impact on your eye health. Given time, you will most likely stop noticing these floating objects in your eye. That said, it's always a good idea to get floaters or any sudden vision change checked out by your eye care provider.

Even if the floaters in the eye are not impeding your ability to carry out day-to-day tasks, monitoring them with your eye healthcare provider can give you peace of mind and help you catch any serious condition early. Inside, if you're working at a computer, it's a little bit more tricky. You can get displays that cover the computer screen that kind of filter it a little bit, use a little bit less contrast in your screen.

Sometimes that will diminish the floaters as it bothers you. Interviewer: That's also the gravity thing, is why when I close my eyes, I'll see them float up sometimes, and then I open my eyes and they go away?

Zaugg: Because when your eye closes, your eye actually moves underneath your eyelid and it'll move the floater. Is there anything else that I should be aware of floaters? My kind of takeaway is they're a part of life for a lot of people. There are some things you can do to minimize seeing them if they're bothersome. If you start getting some new floaters with other symptoms, I should go see someone like you. Zaugg: There's a couple other medical conditions that you should be thinking about other things.

So if you're diabetic , sometimes floaters can be a sign of bleeding inside the eye. Diabetics have a lot of eye problems when they're uncontrolled. So they usually have an eye doctor that they've been with, and that would be a reason to get an eye exam more quickly than others. Other things that can happen, if you've had a recent eye surgery, that's a warning sign that something could be going wrong. So have your eyes examined.

There's other rare inflammatory conditions of the eye, in a category called "uveitis," where the floaters can actually be conglomerations of inflammatory cells that could be signs of other serious eye conditions.

So the bottom line is if you get a new floater, get an eye exam so that they can determine what's causing it. If it is one of these benign floaters, then that's great. You move on with your life.

But we have to make sure that there's not something more serious going on. Zaugg: Well, that kind of depends on how old you are, and if you wear glasses, if you don't wear glasses. Zaugg: If you're doing well and there's no issues with your eyes when you're younger, getting an eye exam every 10 years is probably fine.

Zaugg: As you get into your 40s and 50s, maybe every five years. Treating eye floaters depends on the underlying cause. Some cases are harmless, but more severe cases can affect your eye health. If eye floaters begin to impair your vision, there are treatments available to make them less noticeable or remove them. Sometimes the best treatment is nothing at all. In many cases, eye floaters will fade or disappear on their own.

As a result, your vision will begin to adapt. Coping with eye floaters is the least invasive option to protect your eyes.

If the floaters become a nuisance or begin to impair your vision, discuss your options with your eye doctor. A vitrectomy is an invasive surgery that can remove eye floaters from your line of vision. Within this procedure, your eye doctor will remove the vitreous through a small incision.

The vitreous is a clear, gel-like substance that keeps the shape of your eye round. Your doctor will replace the vitreous with a solution to maintain the shape of your eye. Your body will then produce more vitreous that will eventually replace this new solution. Though effective, a vitrectomy may not always remove eye floaters.

This surgery is used for severe symptoms of floaters. Laser therapy involves aiming lasers at the eye floaters.