Floaters – so what are Floaters and why are they a health problem?

Floaters are small shapes that some people see floating in their field of vision.

Floaters are small shapes that some people see floating in their field of vision.

Floaters are small shapes that some people see floating in their field of vision.

They can be different shapes and sizes and may look like:

tiny black dots

small, shadowy dots

larger cloud-like spots

long, narrow strands

You may have many small floaters in your field of vision or just one or two larger ones. Most floaters are small and quickly move out of your field of vision.

Floaters are often most noticeable when you’re looking at a light-coloured background, such as a white wall or clear sky.

Do floaters affect vision?

Floaters sometimes occur without a person noticing them. This is because the brain constantly adapts to changes in vision and learns to ignore floaters so they don’t affect vision.

Floaters are usually harmless and don’t significantly affect your vision. However, it’s important you have your eyes checked by an optician regularly (at least once every two years).

Larger floaters can be distracting and may make activities involving high levels of concentration, such as reading or driving, difficult.

Find an optician near you.

What causes floaters?

Floaters are small pieces of debris that float in the eye’s vitreous humour. Vitreous humour is a clear, jelly-like substance that fills the space in the middle of the eyeball.

The debris casts shadows on to the retina (the light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eye). If you have floaters, it’s these shadows you’ll see.

Floaters can occur as your eyes change with age. In most cases, they don’t cause significant problems and don’t require treatment.

In rare cases, floaters may be a sign of a retinal tear or retinal detachment (where the retina starts to pull away from the blood vessels that supply it with oxygen and nutrients).

Read more about the causes of floaters.

Floaters can’t be prevented because they’re part of the natural ageing process.

When to seek medical help

Visit your optician immediately if you notice an increase or sudden change in your floaters, particularly if you notice white flashes and some loss of vision.

Your optician may refer you to an ophthalmologist (a specialist in diagnosing and treating eye conditions) who can check your retina for tears or retinal detachment.

Even though floaters are usually harmless and don’t significantly affect your vision, it’s important you have your eyes checked regularly by an optician (at least once every two years).

Read more about diagnosing floaters.

Treating floaters

In most cases, floaters don’t cause major problems and don’t require treatment. Eye drops or similar types of medication won’t make floaters disappear.

After a while, your brain learns to ignore floaters and you may not notice them.

If your floaters don’t improve over time, or if they significantly affect your vision, a vitrectomy may be recommended. This is a surgical operation to remove the vitreous humour in your eye along with any floating debris and replace it with a saline (salty) solution.

If your retina has become detached, surgery is the only way to re-attach it. Without surgery, a total loss of vision is almost certain. In 90% of cases, only one operation is needed to re-attach the retina.

Read more about treating floaters.

Can you see what’s on the menu?

Vision

Vision


Outside of the home or work, 35+ glasses wearers said the top three most common places to use their reading glasses are in pubs, bars or restaurants (61%), banks (50%) and theatres (42%)

 

Almost half (47%) of reading glasses wearers over 35 said the combination of small font and ambient lighting makes reading menus difficult

Most (53%) also said they would struggle when ordering food or drinks from a menu without their reading glasses

Magnivision have gone to a typical British pub, to serve up a helpful alternative for those who struggle to read a menu

Ever gone out for lunch or dinner, opened up the menu and thought “Oh no I’ve forgotten my glasses”, or worse “I just can’t read that” – if so, then you’re not alone!

New research, commissioned by Magnivision reveals most (53%) over 35 year old glasses wearers would struggle when ordering food or drinks from a menu without their reading glasses, with nearly half (47%) struggling with the combination of small font sizes and ambient lighting. So what happens if you forget your reading glasses?

Responding to the research results, Magnivision have gone to a typical British pub to offer reading glasses to pub goers who were struggling to read a menu, which had been edited to resemble an eye test. In fact, the research showed most (52%) glasses wearers aged over 35 would find it handy if a restaurant stocked backup glasses, in case they forgot theirs. So this is a call to action to not only encourage people to go and get regular eye checks, but also to venues to help those who have forgotten their reading glasses.

Celebrity chef Phil Vickery commented “eating out is one of life’s great pleasures and it’s a shame if struggling to read the menu is diminishing this experience. It can be incredibly frustrating and mildly embarrassing trying to make your choice if you have poor eyesight”

Magnivision trialled it’s reading glasses in one pub but is keen to encourage the wider pub and restaurant sector to offer reading glasses, as they’re the most popular places to use reading glasses, outside the home and workplace. But they’re keen to not stop there in encouraging other businesses to consider reading glasses, with banks (50%) and theatres (42%) following closely behind as the top venues for needing reading glasses.

Are you seeing things clearly?- submit for questions here for next weeks show on eye health and how to spot possible eye problems


Khalid Ikram

Khalid Ikram

Log on to our live and interactive web TV show where Consultant Ophthalmic and Refractive Surgeon Khalid Ikram talks about some common eye health myths and gives advice on how to look after your eye health and spot potential problems

It’s something many of us take for granted, but good eye health is by no means guaranteed and while age is a key factor in the deterioration of our eyesight and the health of our eyes, there are many more factors that can contribute.

According to a survey conducted by Spectrum Thea 94% of Optometrists don’t think as a nation we take our eye health seriously or take care of our eyes as much as we should.

Our reliance on computers and digital devices as well as things like diet, alcohol consumption and smoking can all have an impact.

And if, like millions of Brits, you’re not getting your eyes tested regularly, then you may not even be aware that you have a problem.

To help spot the signs log on to our live and interactive web TV show where Khalid Ikram discusses some common eye myths, demonstrates exercises to help your vision and answers all your questions on how to keep your eyes healthy.

Click here to submit questions before the show

Khalid Ikram, Consultant Ophthalmic and Refractive Surgeon and Janet Peacock joins us live online at

 

on Monday 22nd September at 1pm


” Cam Finds his Voice” – Watch this inspiring documentary about a blind boy whose music career is taking off.


Cam Dawson

Cam Dawson

Things will always change really and one of the biggest things that can change in your life is yourself.

 

In 2013 Cam Dawson left his home for a new life in Auckland… a terrifying and exciting move for a boy who is blind. Now 14, Cam’s music career is taking off as he finds both his confidence and his voice.

 

With thanks to Roundhead Studios

“How does one go about writing a song? Cam Dawson was surprised to find out he could sing. Now that he has, he’s finding his voice, and asking a lot of questions… What do the words mean to me? How should it sound? How do I portray feeling?

‘The idea is to have an impact on me, and also mean something to the people who are going to listen to it.’

Although it’s early days, now that he’s discovered his voice he’s keen to see how far he can expand on this gift.

So are we Cam.

We can’t wait to see where this next chapter of your life leads. If you like this piece of extra content, check out Cam’s MiniDoc and watch his full Documentary.”


Macular Degeneration – A users guide! Find out more about the most common cause of blindness in the developed world in an exclusive Q&A with Victoria O’Connor and Cathy Yelf.


Macular Degeneration

Macular Degeneration

A few weeks ago PatientTalk.Org ran a short blog post looking at the impact of UV radiation on the eyes. In particular we looked at the risks and some of the issues surrounding macular degeneration the most common cause of blindness in the developed world.

So we are happy to share with you a recent interview we conducted which provides a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) guide to macular degeneration. While , perhaps, not quite all you need to know it gives a great overview of the condition. If you have any follow up questions feel free to add them to the comments box below and we will ask one of the experts we interviewed to respond.

PatientTalk.Org were pleased to interview Victoria O’Connor and Cathy Yelf to bring you this macular degeneration users guide. Ms Yelf is head of external relations at the Macular Society and looks after their patient information and medical research programmes. Ms O’Connor is the Eye Health Condition Manager at Boots Opticians.


PATIENTTALK.ORG Cathy the first question is, what is macular degeneration?

YELF Macular Degeneration is  an eye condition which leads to the most common cause of blindness in the developed world/countries and it’s a condition of the retina of the back of the eye, the macular is a very small section of the retina, it’s about the size of a grain of rice and its actually responsible for most of our vision, for all the fine detail of what we see, most of our colour vision and all of our central vision. So if you lose your macular you cannot see faces, you can’t drive, you can’t read and at the end stage of the condition people have just a blank in the middle of their vision. So it’s a very serious, very deliberating and devastating condition for people if they are not getting the right kind of support and help.

PATIENTTALK.ORG And what the difference between wet and dry macular degeneration?

YELF Well yes your right there are two forms of age related macular degeneration. The first one is dry; most people have dry macular disease. And it’s called dry just because it’s not wet it doesn’t mean that your eyes are dry or anything and it’s really a very slow degeneration of the cells of the retina and the macular in particular so it becomes a little bit like a worn out carpet, its becomes a bit thread bare and the seeing parts of the cells of the eye the phot receptors of the eye gradually die off and people lose their vision .It’s quite a slow process over months and sometimes many years,  And unfortunately there’s no way of stopping this progression at the moment, its untreatable. Wet macular disease effects fewer people but it’s a more aggressive faster acting disease and it’s called wet because its characterised by the growth of tiny abnormal blood vessels which grow into the macular and these leak and bleed and this leaking, bleeding and swelling of the macular eventually scars the macular and that robs people of their central vision, now that can happen quite quickly in the matter of days or week, fortunately there is a now treatment for wet macular degeneration which is injections of a drug into the eye which stops the developments of these abnormal blood vessels, but both of them often in the end lead to poor vision.

PATIENTTALK.ORG Victoria could you just talk a bit about what UV rays do to increase macular degeneration?

O’CONNOR  So there’s been an increase in evidence over the number of years to suggest the true link between life time UV exposure and the development of macular degeneration as any one of us begins to age and actually, In fact the oral ib published a report called our future …….. reports and it estimates that over half a million people in the UK at the moment are suffering with partial sight lose or complete blindness as a results of cataracts  or macular degeneration , and they too support the fact that there is growing evidence with the link with UV  exposure and the risk of developing. I think UV exposure is a matter that is largely sort of clouded in many myths and many different misconceptions of how much and when were exposed, we know that up to 30-40% of UV exposure can happen on a day when the sky is very cloudy and many of us wander out and about certainly without sunglasses on and many of us even in spectacle lenses that don’t provide any great protection. So the real message were trying to drill home to people at the moment is about ensuring that people, number 1 are aware of how do I protect myself  but also to ensure that people are aware that this about a life time worth of exposure rather than popping outside on the one sunny day we have.

PATIENTTALK.ORG Could you just go through how macular degeneration can be treated?

YELF Well there’s the wet form that can be treated but the other forms can’t. Would you like me to talk more about the injections?

O’CONNOR  Well I think what we probably could say to Cathy’s point; the dry form is the most common form so we know that a significant of patients suffering will have the dry form. Clearly the risks of that is two folds, leaving an immediate risk of disturbance to vision it creates but obviously the other risk is that it then converts to the wet form which is even more  severe. As Cathy said we can’t treat the dry form and that’s why the message about prevention and protection is so important, we also know with macular degeneration is that there are several risk factors that we just can’t control, so things like age, gender and sex but actually the elements we can control are absolutely the UV exposure and of course a little bit about dieting and nutrition as well.

YELF And smoking of course is the biggest factor.

PATIENTTALK.ORG And who gets MD, is it just age related or if you help pro long exposure to UV can you get it when you’re young?

O’CONNOR  so as Cathy said there are several different risk factors so the principle risk factors would be smoking increases your risk, family history increases your risk, ageing is clearly the biggest risk factor, a diet that is lacking in anti-oxidants or generally lacking in good combination regularly of fruit and veg and clearly those who are exposed to UV over their lifetime are at an increased risk. It does tend to affect the majority of patients at the later stage of life, so certainly the over 60s but there has been cases reported younger then that as well.

PATIENTTALK.ORG And why has boots decided today to announce that they are going to include UV protection in their lenses?

O’CONNOR  So I think UV is a topic that were all very well educated on as a general population in the UK, in relation to certain aspects so skin care for example, mums and dads daren’t let their kids out, even on a cloudy overcast day without popping some sun cream on . We know as women were very conditioned to buy moisturises, skin care even make up with an SPF built in. What we are less aware of though is that actually the eyes are up to ten times more sensitive to UV damage then the skin itself is and age related macular degeneration is clearly a huge concern at the moment but there are other conditions linked to exposure as well.  So what we wanted to do first of all was top make UV protection really assessable to everybody , so  actually if you don’t want to walk around in your sunny’s all year around, simply wearing a pair of spec with adequate protection can be a fantastic second option. What we also believed is that there is nobody in the UK who isn’t appropriate for having some UV protection whether you’re a child, adult, working age or in older life and so it was really important to us that whatever level of protection we introduced we could introduce it at a point that would be assessable to all and that’s why we are not charging extra for it, so it’s coming as standard on any pair of Boots lenses that our customers choose.

PATIENTTALK.ORG If they want some more information where can they go?

O’CONNOR  We’ve got loads of information on boots.com, on out opticians website or if you pop into any Boots store they should be able some further detail.