What are the Symptoms of Floaters in the Eye

The small moving spots appearing in your field of vision are called eye floaters. They become noticeable especially when you are looking at something bright, such as white paper or a blue sky. Although eye floaters do not interfere with your sight, they can be quite annoying.

It is occasional for a particular large eye floater to cast a subtle shadow over your vision which tends to occur only in certain types of light. Most people learn to live with eye floaters and ignore them because they often improve over months to years. It only happens rarely that benign eye floaters become bothersome enough to be considered for treatment.

Symptoms of Eye Floaters

Eye floaters move as the eyes move. They generally appear to dart away when you try to focus on them.

Symptoms of eye floaters may include:

• Spots in your vision that may look like dark specks or knobby, transparent strings of floating material
• Spots that move when you move your eyes, so when you try to look at them, they move quickly out of your visual field
• Spots that are most noticeable when you look at a plain bright background, such as a blue sky or a white wall
• Spots that eventually settle down and drift out of the line of vision

Eye floaters can appear in many different shapes, such as:

• Black or gray dots
• Squiggly lines
• Threadlike strands, which can be knobby and semi-transparent
• Cobwebs
• Ring shaped

Once you develop eye floaters they usually do not go away, though they tend to improve over time.

Image Courtesy: Getty

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