Eye Floaters: What AreThey?

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.