Eye Floaters: Those Tiny Spots and Squiggly Lines in Front of Your Vision

Have you ever seen tiny dark spots or squiggly lines suddenly appearing in front of your eyes? They seem to follow your gaze and maybe disappear after a short while. WHAT ARE THEY?

A LITTLE BIT OF EYE ANATOMY

Our eyes aren’t a solid structure. They have a hollow space inside filled with a gel-like substance called Vitreous Humor, which is composed 99% of water, the rest is collagen fibers, proteins, salts and sugars. The Retina is a sensory layer which is innermost of the eye globe. It collects visual information along with the light that arrives through the pupil and focused from the lens. It then sends signals to the brain’s visual cortex which makes an image out of those signals.

HOW ARE FLOATERS FORMED?

Floaters are formed when the proteins in the vitreous form clumps or aggregates, as miniscule solids, that cast shadows onto the retina. The retina perceives these shadows as dark spots or lines in the visual field and sends them to the brain to form an image that is so called “Floaters”.

ARE THEY HARMFUL?

Most floaters are harmless and go away with some time. They are a part of the normal age-related changes after our 40s, in which the vitreous shrinks and degenerates. Young people can have floaters too, especially if you’re myopic, diabetic or hypertensive, had any eye injury or previous ophthalmic surgery. For us folks with glasses, we might have encountered them occasionally.

WHEN TO GET CHECKED BY A DOCTOR?

Floaters that stay for a significant amount of time and if accompanied by other symptoms like flashes of light, eye pain, profound visual loss or maybe a blurry curtain in your eye can be warning signs of something serious. Some underlying sight-threatening diseases that have floaters as a symptom:

Retinal tear (detached vitreous pulls and breaks the retina)

Retinal detachment (a thin layer of retina separates away from the rest)

Vitreous detachment (separation of the vitreous humor from the retina)

Infections

Uveitis (inflammation of the middle layer of the eye)

Often our elderly have floaters along with other visual disturbances. Symptomatic floaters (SVOs) can be quite debilitating to a person’s daily activities and they require treatment.

There aren’t any medications currently that are used for floaters. Mostly surgical procedures are done like vitrectomy, which are safer and warrant less complications than laser treatments.

Do get your eyes checked by an ophthalmologist if you have sudden floaters with serious symptoms!