Replies

“Do any of you suffer from “floaters” in your eyes? I’m finding it increasingly difficult with my vision.”

yes. it was impacting my driving safety it was so bad.

“Is there a remedy for this?”

yes.

It’s called vitrectomy.

basically, the eye surgeon sucks out the goo and replaces it with saline solution, and within 18 hours the body generates new aqueous humor.

I had my right eye done about 8 weeks ago and am having my left eye done Monday.

Recovery is usually about a month, with the main post-surgery effect coming from a long acting atropine dilator the surgeon treats the eye with during surgery that causes the eye to be dilated for a few weeks. The purpose of the dilation is to help reduce post-surgery inflammation.

Most of the online articles go on and on about oil or air bubbles having to be put into the eye after the surgery and the need to lie on one’s belly for a month until that is absorbed, but that’s old school stuff, and modern, uncomplicated vitrectomy’s simply for removing floaters don’t require any of that. Recovery was easy and straightforward.

My surgeon is a bit old school and likes to do this procedure under general, though some of the younger guys in his practice go with just local and brief periods of Propofol. At any rate, the surgery is 20-30 minutes, and even with general anesthesia, they don’t put you out as deeply as with, say, abdominal surgery, so you regain lucidness and energy much quicker than the deeper general.

My surgeon chose my right eye first, even though the floaters are worse in my left eye, because the vitreous humor had already naturally separated from my retina due to simple aging, thus eliminating subsequent possible/probable separation as a new source of floaters after the surgery.

Because my surgeon induces separation to prevent new floaters if natural separation hasn’t already occurred, the right eye was a simpler surgery and a good conservative first choice to see how things would go overall. (My surgeon believes in inducing the separation if it hasn’t already occurred because of the high probability of natural separation later due to aging requiring ANOTHER vitrectomy to clean out the new trash that can result from the separation. It’s the same idea as replacing the pulley and water pump when you are replacing the timing belt because you already have the timing belt cover off.

At any rate, the complication rate is extremely low IN THE HANDS OF AN EXPERIENCED AND COMPETENT SURGEON, so the key is to make sure you have a guy who does several of these on a weekly basis SUCCESSFULLY. Quiz the guy about the number of these he does a month, and the number and type of complications he has had for this particular surgery in his career.

I’m lucky that we have a world-class group of eye surgeons in my little berg (in fact, my surgeon attracts patients who need him to fix botched surgeries from other surgeons).

The results between my new right eye and old left eye are like the difference between day and night, so I’m greatly looking forward to getting my other eye fixed on Monday.

Insurance SHOULD cover the surgery when floaters make your vision dangerously poor, which is something the surgeon can easily see when he looks inside your eyeballs. Medicare covers it with no problem.