There are no specific characteristics of your floaters which will determine if vitrectomy will be helpful or not. The most important factor is to determine if whatever you are seeing is located in your vitreous.
A floater is anything which moves back and forth with your eye movement. It doesn’t matter about the size or color or translucency. Anything which moves with eye movement can be considered a “floater.”
Vitreous Opacities and Floaters
These are synonyms. Vitreous opacities is the clinical term for floaters. The opacities either absorb light and cast a shadow on your retina or reflect light causing glare, haziness in your vision or giving you the appearance of looking through a cob web.
These are all caused by something in your vitreous. The vitreous is no longer optically clear causing you the symptoms.
Shape and Size Do Not Matter
The shape of the floaters or the size of the vitreous opacities is not really important in making the decision about FOV.
Small or large, skinny or fat, thick and dark or faint and light do not really matter. If you are able to see them and they distract you, they are treated the same way.
The color of the floaters also does not matter. While usually dark or grey, the color of the actual floater does not impact the decision for treatment.
What’s most important?
Movement with Eye Movement
When you move your eyes back and forth or up and down, do the opacities also move to and fro? If so, the opacities are highly likely to be located in your vitreous. It’s the only place in your eye where you could have such symptoms.
By definition, the opacities have to be located in your vitreous. Therefore, vitrectomy or even laser might be helpful because the problem is in the vitreous cavity.
What Is Not a Floater
Anything in your vision which is fixed and does not move with your eye movement is probably not a floater. At times, however, a floater can be so large that it never really clears your visual pathway and it’s difficult for you to determine if there is movement.
In general, however, if you can not detect any movement with you move your eyes, the problem may not be the vitreous and vitrectomy or laser may not be helpful.
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