Rich III, an ophthalmologist based in Falls Church. This degenerative condition occurs in 30 percent of people older than 50, according to William L. Many spontaneous tears occur in boomers who develop posterior vitreous separation. (It also affects more men than women, the NEI reports.) The National Eye Institute says there are a variety of risk factors for retinal detachments, including being extremely nearsighted, having a family history of the problem and aging. I hadn’t been hit in the eye or experienced any other eye-related injury, so the idea that my retina might be torn never crossed my mind.īut more than 90 percent of retinal detachments occur spontaneously, according to Gordon Byrnes, an RGW surgeon. If this is just another floater, I told myself, I can live with it. I should have called my regular ophthalmologist right away, but I didn’t have health insurance at the time for financial reasons. An early-stage retinal tear can be treated in an eye doctor’s office with laser surgery that creates a weld around the edges of the tear and usually keeps the retina from detaching, according to Vinay Desai, an ophthalmologist with the Retina Group of Washington (RGW). While annoying, ordinary floaters are very common and rarely are cause for alarm.īut a sudden burst of floaters can be a warning sign that a tear is starting to develop in the retina, the light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye. Small moving spots that appear in a person’s field of vision, floaters typically occur when tiny pieces of the eye’s gellike vitreous humor break loose within the inner back portion of the eye. But being 62 at the time - a baby boomer - I should have.įor years, I have had “floaters” in both eyes. It started late on a Thursday afternoon last May, when I noticed a wispy dark shadow in the lower left corner of my right eye.

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