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- Floaters don't have to be forever.
- Told your eyes are "fine"?
- The chart is measuring the wrong thing.
- Are your floaters more than a nuisance?
- Refractive vitrectomy: the definitive option.
- We operate in the open, watched live by surgeons worldwide.
- Three questions patients always ask
- Get your floaters measured.
- References
Floaters don’t have to be forever.
Drifting shadows can take the clarity out of your reading, your driving, your work. That is real. It can be measured, and it can be treated. One procedure, refractive vitrectomy, removes them, in our own surgical suite. Your surgeon is a retina specialist who taught at Harvard Medical School for 25 years and lets other surgeons watch him operate.
You’re Not Imagining It
Told your eyes are “fine”?
The chart is measuring the wrong thing.
Floaters don’t blur the letters on an eye chart. They wash out contrast. You can read the 20/20 line and still have lost much of the quality of your vision.
When floaters get dense enough to affect your vision and your daily life, there is a name for it: Vision-Degrading Myodesopsia. It is a real disease; it can be measured, and it is described in the medical literature.[1] You do not simply have to live with it.
Move across the image — the shadows drift, then lag behind
An illustration of what vision-degrading floaters can look like — semi-transparent shadows that drift with your gaze and settle a beat later. Individual experience varies; this is not a photograph of any patient’s vision.
2-Minute Self-Check
Are your floaters more than a nuisance?
Seven quick questions about how floaters affect your day. This is for education only; it is not a diagnosis. The questions are like the ones specialists ask.
Your answers stay on your device; nothing is sent or stored.
Please answer all seven questions first.
This self-check is educational and does not diagnose any condition or replace an eye examination. Individual results vary.
Get eye care right away, whatever your score, if you suddenly see many new floaters, flashes of light, or a dark curtain across your vision. These can be signs of a retinal tear or a detached retina. That is a different problem, and it needs treatment fast.
The Treatment
Refractive vitrectomy: the definitive option.
One procedure that takes the floaters out of your eye, instead of breaking them into smaller pieces. Like LASIK, it is surgery for the quality of your vision, your eye chart score is already 20/20.
The surgery uses very small instruments, needs no stitches, and is done under local anesthesia in our own surgical suite. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes. We take out only the floaters causing your symptoms and leave the healthy parts of the eye alone.[3] This is real surgery with real risks. Most older patients who still have their own lens will need cataract surgery later. Less often, there can be a retinal tear, a detached retina, or an infection. We go through every risk with you before you decide. For some patients we also offer YAG laser, described honestly.
Why Boston Vision
We operate in the open, watched live by surgeons worldwide.
Floater surgery is a choice, not an emergency, and this field is short on accountability. Our answer: Dr. Arroyo streams his surgeries live for other surgeons around the world to watch on stych.tv, including when something goes wrong. A surgeon who lets his peers watch every case can give you honest numbers up front.
For Dr. Arroyo, this is teaching, not marketing. He trained at Duke under Robert Machemer, the surgeon who invented this type of eye surgery, and spent 25 years teaching students, residents and fellows at Harvard Medical School. stych.tv carries that teaching on from his own surgical suite, open to any surgeon in the world.
Jorge Arroyo, MD, MPH: retina surgeon, board certified. Medical degree from Yale; residency at UCSF; retina fellowship at Duke; 25 years on the Harvard Medical School faculty; more than 60 published research papers. Dr. Arroyo's full profile
For patients, we pick out short clips of typical surgeries, including how problems are spotted and handled, so you can see the kind of work we do before you decide.
Three questions patients always ask
My eye doctor says my vision is 20/20 and my eyes are fine. Why do I still see this?
Because the eye chart measures the wrong thing. It uses sharp black letters on white, which floaters barely affect. What floaters do is scatter light and wash out contrast. After the vitreous gel pulls away from the retina, contrast has been measured to drop by about 52%, and surgery reverses that drop.[2] You can be 20/20 and still see poorly. Your symptoms are real. The standard test just doesn't pick them up.
Is YAG laser a cure for floaters?
No, not a cure. The laser breaks floaters into smaller pieces. It does not take anything out of the eye. It is still a real option for the right patient. The only randomized trial tested one floater type (a Weiss ring). In it, 53% of patients clearly improved, versus 0% of those given a dummy treatment.[4] Our own patients report higher satisfaction than that, though that figure comes from an informal in-house survey, not a published study. YAG is not the same as surgery, but for many patients it is a worthwhile choice.
What about the low-dose atropine drops I've read about?
They do not remove floaters. Atropine widens the pupil slightly, and a wider pupil blurs the shadow a floater casts on the retina, so the floater becomes less noticeable while you keep using the drop. The floater itself is untouched. In the 2025 series that started this conversation, 44 patients were prescribed the drop and 13 reported being satisfied, about 30%, with no comparison group and a one-week endpoint.[5] We do not offer or prescribe it. If your floaters are new, the more important point is that new floaters and flashes can signal a retinal tear, and a drop that quiets them can hide one. Get examined first.
Get your floaters measured.
A consultation with real testing will tell you whether you have Vision-Degrading Myodesopsia, and whether treatment makes sense, including the chance that it doesn't.
References
The peer-reviewed sources cited on this page.
- Sebag J. Vitreous and vision degrading myodesopsia. Prog Retin Eye Res. 2020;79:100847.
- Garcia G, Khoshnevis M, Yee KM, Nguyen-Cuu J, Nguyen JH, Sebag J. Degradation of contrast sensitivity function following posterior vitreous detachment. Am J Ophthalmol. 2016;172:7-12.
- Boneva SK, Nguyen JH, Mamou J, et al. Clinical management of vision degrading myodesopsia from vitreous floaters: observation vs. limited refractive vitrectomy. Ophthalmol Retina. 2025;9(12):1149-1158.
- Shah CP, Heier JS. YAG laser vitreolysis vs sham YAG vitreolysis for symptomatic vitreous floaters: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2017;135(9):918-923.
- Du J, Sabbagh O, Do BK, et al. Low-dose 0.01% atropine eye drops for symptomatic vitreous floaters: a noninvasive, safe, and effective therapeutic option. J Vitreoretin Dis. 2025;9(6):831-835.Retrospective case series, no control group and no placebo. 44 patients were prescribed 0.01% atropine once daily; 22 completed at least 7 consecutive days. Of those 22, 13 (59.1%) were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" and 11 (50%) said they would continue. Measured against all 44 patients prescribed the drop, 13 reported satisfaction (29.5%). About 18.2% reported side effects involving near vision, distance vision, or light sensitivity. The endpoint was one week and the primary outcome was subjective satisfaction.
