Research for Eye Floaters Treatment

Welcome to our quest to find a safe non-surgical treatment for vitreous floaters!

How you can help make a difference today:

1. A Donation to support eye floaters research

2. Sharing our page with your networks:
http://www.gofundme.com/floaters

The Eye on Vision Foundation is supporting ground-breaking research efforts into a non-surgical treatment for vitreous floaters.

Personal Mesage:
Hello! I'm Jen Ambrose, and I would like to share with you my story. In July 2005 I woke up one morning with my eyes full of eye floaters. Debris was swishing around all over the inside of my eyes. I went to the eye doctor immediately and was told that there was nothing that they could do. I had developed floaters and there was no treatment or research being done in the field. I was told I would have to learn to live with them. For 9 long years I "learned" to live with them. This meant never going outside without sunglasses, wearing sunglasses in flourescent lighting and in rooms with windows, using extreme concentration while driving due to the constant "dirty fishbowl" vision. This year my floaters have worsened and now I have trouble reading small print, as I have to "look through" the dark gray floater that recently developed in my right eye's central vision. I can't drive at night with the glare of the headlights reflecting off the floaters in my eyes, and daytime driving is a nightmare too as I have to constantly look up, down, left and right to move the floaters out of my way for a second or two. Then they float right back.  I see them all the time, and have at least 20 in each eye. Still no treatment available and no current research on treating floaters with drug therapies.

Our Objective:
The Eye on Vision Foundation is supporting research for a safe non-surgical treatment for vitreous eye floaters, without the risk of cataract formation, retinal detachment, vitreous frill, glaucoma or other visual risks and side effects.

What are Floaters:
What are vitreous eye floaters? Eye floaters are spots in your vision. They may look like black or gray specks, strings, lines, clouds or cobwebs that drift about when you move your eyes. While floaters may be non-bothersome for some patients, others have a more severe case, which greatly affect their quality of life. Many patients who suffer with floaters cannot read well, use the computer, spend time outdoors, or drive. Research has also shown that patients with floaters often times suffer from a loss of contrast sensitivity, possibly due to the light scattering that floaters cause.

Why is there no drug research now:
While the medical community as a whole has taught doctors to treat floaters as benign and a normal part of aging, this condition should not be seen as normal. Billions of dollars are spent in the cosmetics industry to rid people of wrinkles (which is also a normal part or aging), so why wouldn’t research be done to rid people of gray lines and clouds in their vision? Why? Because floaters have yet to be truly recognized as a disease. The Eye on Vision Foundation strives to change this outlook in the medical community.

Current Options for Floaters:

There are currently 3 options for floater sufferers.

1) Do nothing - just live with them

2) Undergo a vitrectomy

A vitrectomy is an eye surgery that was designed as a “sight-saving” procedure to reach the retina, which also removes the vitreous. There are two types of vitrectomy - a full and a core. The full usually requires the induction of a PVD in an attempt to remove as much of the vitreous as possible. With a core viretctomy the middle of the vitreous is removed leaving a thin layer of vitreous gel around the lens and the retina itself. For patients with floaters extremely close to the retina or the lens, a core vitrectomy may not be enough to relieve their symptoms.

Recent statistics on a core vitrectomy can be found here:

Vitrectomy For Floaters – Prospective Efficacy Analyses and Retrospective Safety Profile

Some of the risks of vitrectomy include:

Infection
Cataract Formation
Bleeding, mild or severe
Retinal detachment
Excessive scar tissue formation
Poor vision
High or low pressure in the eye

3) Laser Treatment

This treatment is offered at a few places around the world. Results vary greatly and there are very few statistics to support the prodecure (primarily just patient accounts that you read on the web).

The risks of treating with laser are very similar to that of vitrectomy.

Patients with severe floaters have flown to other states and countries seeking out vitrectomy and laser surgery to try and rid themselves of floaters.

Imagine something being so bad with your eyes that you would fly half way around the world and risking vision complications just for the chance at some relief. It’s a terrible choice for patients to make.

Pharmacologic Vitreolysis:
This is why, it is our strong belief that pharmacologic vitreolysis  (the use of drugs) is the safest future cure for vitreous floaters. Our hope is to have a novel enzyme developed for dissolving floaters.

In order to develop pharmacologic vitreolysis (drugs) for the purpose of dissolving floaters, adequate tools are needed to evaluate the effects of different drugs at different concentrations for varied durations of exposure.

One tool that is needed to evaluate this is a light scattering apparatus. This tool will facilitate both objective and clinical measures of light scattering by floaters as well as the development of a pharmacologic vitreolysis (drug) cure.

There are several informative research articles which can be found on Dr. Sebag's site - VMR Institute.
VMR Research Publications

Closing Statement:
I know I’m including a lot of scientific terminology, but it is important for people to be informed. My retina doctor says that I know more about the vitreous and retina than 99.9% of his patients. Trust me, I wish that I didn’t, but I suffer greatly from a severe case of vitreous floaters and have for a decade. They have recently worsened to the point where I spend maybe 5 minutes a day on the computer and I only drive locally and never at night. I’m 37 years old, and there are 80 year olds that see more clearly than I do. I’m 100% dedicated to finding a safe treatment for vitreous floaters. With your help, we can get this very important research started again. Remember, all people will develop floaters. There are many reasons why – eye injury, the need for distance glasses (myopia), LASIK, prior YAG surgery, cataract surgery or as a natural part of the aging process. The question is to what degree? Will you luck out any get one or two that you barely ever notice or will you be less fortunate and develop 20, 30, or more in each eye that you see even in dim light and with sunglasses on? There is no way to know for sure, but once they are there, they are there to stay. Let’s work together to change that and find a treatment for vitreous eye floaters!

You can help make a difference today in the lives of many!

Please make a donation to support eye floaters research.

If you are reading this than you may have come across our page while searching for a treatment. Most people *think* that they will come across a prescription, herbal rememdy, supplement, eye exercise, or something else to alleviate their floaters. There isn't one. Please know that I wish that there was, but there isn't. You can spend your money trying vitamin after vitamin, and eye drop after drop, with no results at all, or you can donate the money that you would spend, to this research project. Something important to understand is that there are not big eye research centers trying to find a floaters treatment. No one is looking. It might be hard to believe, but it is true. Sitting back and waiting for something to happen, isn't going to produce any results. Making a donation today to help support research will make a difference.

Remember that every dollar really does count. It will go straight to the research efforts. You will be a part of something that will affect the quality of vision and life for many people suffering from  eye floaters, whether it is the "annoying" kind of floaters or the truely debilating kind. If you have taken the time to read this message, please consider following up with a contribution. It would be greatly appreciated!

Please also start sharing our page with your friends, family and co-workers:
http://www.gofundme.com/floaters  

Thank you,
Jen Ambrose
Eye On Vision Foundation