This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Read more.
Sarit Lesnik Oberstein
Optegra
Who are your typical patients that have floater surgery?
Dr Oberstein lists all the types of patients who she has come across with floaters. From art historians and dentists who rely on visual cues to carry out their job, their floaters are significantly debilitating to consider surgery while others though can be seen are deemed – via dialogue between patient and doctor – not significant enough to outweigh the small risks of surgery.
Transcript
I've had people who've had it just in one eye that they are visually significant, they might have floaters in the other eye, but they're not bothered by them, but in one eye they're extremely bothersome. I've had a dentist who every time he looked down he'd see he his floaters, which meant he couldn't work comfortably because every time he had to look into a mouth, he'd look down and couldn't see what he was doing. I've had a lady who was an art historian who every time she was looking up, the artwork was so bothered by the floaters she didn't feel she could work comfortably. I've had all kinds of patients from pretty much all ages, and many patients get used to their floaters and we don't operate on them, which is of course the safest option. But if people are really, significantly bothered by them, I think some people do qualify for surgery.