New floaters are usually nothing. Occasionally they are not.
A shower of new floaters, flashes of light, or a shadow moving across your vision can mean a retinal tear. A tear caught early is a laser treatment here. A detachment is an operation. The difference between the two is often a matter of days.
Get these looked at.
- A sudden increase in floaters — spots, squiggles, threads or a shower of specks
- Flashes of light, like a camera flash or a streak at the edge of vision
- A curtain or shadow moving across part of your vision
- Sudden loss of vision in any part of the field
Call our office during office hours and describe exactly what you are seeing. Outside office hours, an eye that has lost vision or has a curtain across it should go to the emergency room.
The examination is the diagnosis.
Dilation and a detailed retinal examination. There is no shortcut — the periphery of the retina, where tears form, cannot be assessed through an undilated pupil or a photograph.
Ultrasound where blood or haze inside the eye makes the retina difficult to see directly.
Plan on your vision being blurry for a few hours afterwards and bring sunglasses.
A tear we treat here. A detachment we get you to surgery.
Laser photocoagulation
Spot-welds the edges of a tear to the tissue underneath, so it cannot progress to a detachment. An office procedure.
Cryopexy
A freezing probe applied to the outside of the eye, forming a scar that seals the tear to the wall of the eye.
If it has already detached
A detachment needs operating-room repair — vitrectomy, scleral buckle or pneumatic retinopexy. We do not perform those procedures here. We work with several retina surgeons for surgical retina services, so what happens is that we diagnose it the same day and hand you directly to a surgeon who operates. In a detachment the clock is what matters, and an established relationship moves faster than a referral letter.
Which treatment
Depends on whether it is still a tear or already a detachment, where it sits, and whether the macula is involved. The examination decides it, which is why the examination cannot wait.
If it started today, call today.
Describe what you are seeing when you call. These are triaged, not queued.