Hi in today's video, I'm going to talk about 5 types of eye floaters and what they mean
for Your vision.
I'm Martin Oguzie and this is Martin's Eye Tips, if you're new here thank you for joining
me. I'm a UK based optometrist I've been in practice now for about 20 years and on this
channel I create eye care videos designed to help people see better see more comfortably
and have less anxiety about your eyes. So if
you haven't subscribed to the channel at then
please consider doing so... and let's get into today's video. So I wanted to make today's
video to explain a little bit about the types of vitreous eye floaters that we may get within
the Jelly of the eye called the vitreous, there
are other situations where you may see bits flying about in
your vision as well but, today I'm talking exclusively about the type of floaters
that you get within the Jelly of your eye that we call vitreous eye floaters. I've
also gone ahead today to do some mock-ups of the vitreous Jelly with 5 different substances
to represent the 5 different type of floaters simulation that I'll be talking about today
so hopefully that's just a little bit of a visual illustration of what these type of
floaters may look like. Now I have previously made a video on what eye floaters are and
you can watch that video just by clicking the little link above.
Now first up and in no particular order is your standard eye floaters and these floaters
are the most common type of floaters because they are for the most part age related won't
be seeing these type of floaters is the situation where the Jelly in your eyeball which is normally
solid breaks down a little bit and you get a lot more movement in that Jelly which gives
opportunity for collagen fibres that are within the vitreous Jelly to come together and form
bigger blobs and patches that become visible as shadows in your vision as they moved round
the standard floaters are very commonplace and most people have floaters at some point
in their lives so they aren't really anything to worry bout they still need checking out
though and that's an important thing to remember so for most people who get floaters they often
may speak to somebody else who tells them is nothing to worry about and they may never
come into getting checked out but it is important to just get an eye care professional to have
a look at your the back of your eyes and just to confirm that in this floaters and everything
else in the back of the eyes intact and that no treatment or any further action is needed
so the vitreous floaters are very annoying even when they are just one or 2 and Unfortunately
it's something that you're going to be better off living with because treatment options
just would be way too extreme for the odd one or 2 floaters so most eye care professionals
will tell you to leave them well alone and Unfortunately have to just live with them
but they don't do any harm and you may get a couple more added in the future it's always
worth getting checked out if you guess an increasing number just to make sure that the
whole structure of the Jelly in the back of the eye and the the sack that contains the
Jelly is all intact. So in at #2 is blood there
are several situations where bloke and enter
it into the vitreous Jelly and to the person that's experiencing this it may look like
a large shadow on your vision depending how bad the bleeders it may obstructed the all
or part of the vision and he may not look red in colour actually just may look alike
of dark shadow over your vision and you know any situation where you have a significant
loss in vision sudden loss in vision, shadows over your eyes or anything like that, you
need to get
that checked out as a matter of urgency So what causes the bleeds in the eyeball that
can be as arranger for situations where you may go bleed one of the most common situations
that might lead to a bleed in the eye is when the blood vessels are coming to the eye; the
central
retinal artery and the central retinal vein either one of those may get blocked and they
may get blocked up along the main route or long one of the branches happy within the
eye and when that happens you may get a total kind of blow out of that blood vessel and
lots of blood and enter into the Jelly and this is often described as being a stroke
in the eye other situations where you may get a significant bleeding the I may be in
situations of a retinal tear which might cause a tear in blood vessels as well or reckoned
attachment which might also tear blood vessel or bring blood vessels down. As I say; in
these types of situations
people usually know that they've got this going on and its most
importantly get seen straight away just so that urgent treatment can be given to you
really have to say even though there are many situations where people for whatever reason
maybe they concerned about being a bother to eye care providers that they do n't go
in straight away
people might often think that it's going to clear in an hour and wait, but the longer
that you wait the more problematic it can be and
the more risk it can be 2 to your eyes as well.
#3 is inflammation. Inflammation within the eye is often very serious, especially
if it's not dealt with very quickly with the appropriate have drugs and treatment but
one of the most common causes of information within the eye is uveitis. As
part of the inflammatory process you get these white blood cells and every that get
released into the vitreous Jelly, to the person looking inside your way just looks
like a lot of fatty white deposits within the and it can cause a real obstruction to
seeing and often people who have quite severe inflammatory conditions within the
eye in like you would like a severe uveitis the debris may get so much that it really
causes a problem for you to see through even after you've had the appropriate
treatment and these kind of candidates may well be very suitable for treatments
like vitrectomy, which is where the Jelly is kind of removed and an artificial jelly (Saline fluid) is
put in its place. Now that procedure isn't without its risks it may actually be quite a
significant risk of retinal detachment infections so it's not a procedure that is
taken lightly but it is an option there when you know the vision is so bad that is
worth taking that risk of having the procedure. And the #4th one is called
asteroid hyalosis. Asteroid hyalosis is quite a common condition, I've seen it
many times over the years, it's described as being a degenerative condition so you
do get degeneration within the vitreous itself within the eye you get these
deposits which look white and often very very shimmery, glistening as part of
how they get their name 'asteroid' because they kind of have the appearance
like stars as they glisten so in my illustration I've got them as coloured paper
and sometimes I have seen them so so dramatic that it looks like you just looking
through shimmering kind of; like Swarovski crystals and diamonds because they
glisten so much surprisingly to the person that experiencing them they can still see
through fairly well although when it's really bad it does become an obstruction
and certainly to the examiner looking into the eye can be very hard to see round and
see through them unless the eyes dilated so we can get a better view now as
dramatic as asteroid hyalosis may look is actually very harmless, it doesn't
need any treatment for the most part unless somebody has real kind of
obstruction to their vision caused by these asteroids then we wouldn't do
anything about it. They're caused by a buildup of calcium phosphate and fatty deposits
that build up in the generated process that goes on within the Jelly. I've
personally had patients who have had real problems with their asteroid hyalosis
and it's been a real big obstacle driving things like that because random times
you just get a big blob floating past your vision and can be quite alarming for
people and hazardous in many situations as well so those kind of instances then
treatment options are available again like vitrectomy that would be the primary
eye floater treatment option, you wouldn't do other options like yag laser to
deal with them because often there's so many of them to try and individually laser.
The #5th and final type of eye floaters that I've got down is what we call
a PVD stands for posterior vitreous detachment. The posterior vitreous is the
sack which contained the Jelly in the eyeball this clear sack is held on in 2 points
firmly; at the hole out at the back of the eye and the hole out of the front of the
eye. Now with the posterior vitreous detachment essentially what happens is
that the point where the vitreous is welded on at the back of the eye come
away so it's no longer fixed to the back of the eyeball and as a
result you get this kind of pigmented ring which comes away and floats right in
front of the persons field of vision and typically then you get people describing
what they would say would be like a cobweb or a lace ring, so my
illustration there with the balloon you can see the lace ring that i put in there and
that's kind of representative of what people would see in that situation that
ring we call a Weiss ring and you know it's quite classical of posterior vitreous
detachment now whenever someone gets a posterior vitreous detachment or those
very very common we see all the time it does require a thorough checking of the I
just to make sure that there's no tears or breaks in that sack anywhere else that
might lead to greater risk of retinal detachment because fluid can now seep
through any tear in the sack and also again just to make sure the retina is not
torn at any points as well, but for the most part people who have positive vitreous
detachment will not need any treatment as long as there's no visible signs of tears
or breaks in the in the structure of the vitreous sack itself or the retina. If everything
checks out and you know you're fine and it doesn't necessarily have to be a problem
again in the future, but it is definitely something that need to get seen and get
professional to have a look at just to make sure everything's okay to give you
that all clear so you can rest assured. And those are the 5 types of vitreous
floaters that I wanted to go through with you in this video, definitely love to hear your
feedback on that so if you care to share them please let me know have you
experienced any of these types of floaters have you had to have treatment before
what's your experience being with each of these 5 types of floaters so leave a
message in the comments section love to kind of get your feedback on that as well
and I'll seen you in the next video