Grandmother being able to read to her granddaughter

(In experienced hands, laser treatment of eye floaters is perhaps the safest procedure of intraocular eye surgery. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration when approving YAG lasers for this procedure, classified this as a non-significant risk procedure.)

Benefits

Usually the day after surgery the floaters are gone or quite noticeably reduced. The improvement in reading, driving, and mental distraction can be dramatic. 92 per cent of patients report improvement.

Risks

In general, this is a very low risk procedure. However, as with any ocular surgical procedure, complications such as cataract, glaucoma (elevated eye pressure), hemorrhage, retinal tear or detachment, and others could very rarely arise. Any listing of complications is incomplete.

Our search of the world literature through the local hospital library, Med-Line source, and the National Library of Medicine revealed reports of 57 eyes that were treated for floaters with a laser. There were no serious immediate or long-term complication in any case. (For details see World Literature page of this web site.)