Important Information Everyone Should Know About Vitreous Detachment

Important Information Everyone Should Know About Vitreous Detachment The inside of your eyes are filled with a kind of gel substance known as vitreous. This assists your eyes to maintain that round shape. Millions of very fine fibers are intertwined inside the vitreous. These fibers are attached onto the retina’s surface that contains the tissues of your eye’s sensitivity to light.

With aging the vitreous can shrink slowly and it may cause the fine fibers to pull on your retina’s surface. Generally, these fibers might break and allow your vitreous to shrink and separate from your retina, which is known as vitreous detachment. It’s also called posterior vitreous detachment, which isn’t threatening to your sight and typically won’t require any treatment.

Understanding what Vitreous is about It’s a substance that is clear and found inside your eye with a consistency that is gel-like. This gel consists of ninety-nine percent water and only one percent of hyaluronic and collagen acids, which causes the gel consistency.

Vitreous is a development found with infants inside the uterus and necessary for a person’s hyaloidal artery to grow. After birth, these blood vessels dissolve or shrivel because it won’t be needed any longer to carry the blood from behind your eyes to the front of your eyes.

What does posterior vitreous detachment means?

Generally, the vitreous surface found at the eye’s back also known as the hyaloid will be directly in contact with your retina, the tissues that is sensitive to light, and which converts light into chemical signals.

Although, with aging the vitreous creates pockets of liquid that can cause all the nearby vitreous to collapse centrally. Thus, providing room for hyaloids in separating from its attachment points behind or in front of your eye’s optic nerves. These separations are known as PVD/posterior vitreous detachment.

In most patients there won’t be any symptoms of this separation, still, others might immediately notice it because of a specific symptom.

These symptoms can include: Darkness that appears in the patient’s visual field.

With showers of floaters in front of their eyes.

Light flashes that is also known as photopia.

The importance of these symptoms is that it carries a ten percent risk for retinal tears, where about half of the tears might cause retinal detachments. When these tears happen during PVD the patients may start to experience the symptoms. It’s important to immediately get examined by your eye specialist after the symptoms starts.

Treatments for vitreous detachment If vitreous detachment occurs and there are no retinal tears treatment won’t be indicated or required. Vitreous can continue to liquefy and age, the floaters generally will reduce and won’t be so noticeable.

Once the retinal tear already occurred, it can be treated with cryopexy or laser treatment in order to close these tears. Surgery might be recommended in case these tears progressed and cause retinal detachments.

Patients that will be at risk developing vitreous detachment This detachment commonly may be a condition which typically can affect patients over the age of fifty years, and it might be much more common among patients older than eighty years.

Anyone that suffers from nearsightedness could also be at a higher risk to develop vitreous detachment. If a patient experiences detachment in only 1 eye, they will be more likely in developing it also in their other eye, but it can sometimes occur years later.

How can this condition affect your vision?

Though vitreous detachments are not a threatening condition to your sight, there are times that vitreous fibers can pull very hard on your retina, and cause a macular hole which may develop into a detachment. Both conditions may threaten your eye sight, and that is why it’s so important to receive immediate treatment.

If you leave this condition untreated, this detach retina or macular hole might cause permanent loss of vision in your affected eye/eyes. If you experience any of these symptoms mentioned above, it’s very important to immediately contact your eye specialist to examine your eyes and recommend a treatment that can work for you.