What are "floaters"?

What are "floaters"?

Robert K. Maloney (Ophthalmologist) gives expert video advice on: Are some signs of diabetic retinopathy?; What are the most common treatments of diabetic retinopathy? and more...

Floaters are little spots that float around inside your eye, and they look like they're on the outside world. It looks like something's out there, but it's not. Floaters are caused as a natural aging change in the jelly, the vitreous jelly that's inside your eye. Your eye's filled with this jelly that gives it its shape when you're young, but as we age that jelly collapses and coalesces, and this causes floaters. Those little areas of coalesence look like floaters to you. It's very annoying to many people because when they're looking at something it looks like there's something in the way, spots or a web in front of their vision, and this web moves as their eye moves. Unfortunately there's no treatment for floaters. You just have to live with them. The good news is they tend to drift out of the way over time. So, if you're very annoyed by them now just wait, they should go away, but that can often take months or years.