12 Feb Listening to the Patient: Diagnosing Vitreous Floaters – A Retina Podcast Interview
Curing Patients of Debilitating Eye Floaters
In December, Dr. Sebag was asked to be interviewed by Straight From The Cutter’s Mouth: A Retina Podcast from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, which interviews the leaders of the field of vitreoretinal surgery. He was asked to discuss his unique approach to curing patients of eye floaters.
From Dr. Sebag:
During the interview, I discussed my background, research, and clinical experience on treatments including vitrectomy for vision degrading vitreopathy, or visually significant vitreous floaters (eye floaters).
I describe the pressure I have felt for years, from patients, for me and fellow surgeons to recognize these eye floaters as debilitating enough to warrant surgical treatment. More and more, we are faced with the issue of being able to ascertain the degree to which bothersome floaters could be categorized as debilitating enough to require medical treatment.
Until recently, my patients with visually significant eye floaters have been turned away by others. After hearing many patients complaining of this, I felt compelled to delve deeper into this problem. Now, I, along with my research team, aim to give voice to these previously ignored patients. It is our goal also to illustrate to our colleagues, that indeed vitreous floaters can be significantly problematic. So much so, that they should be considered a disease, and to the extent that they negatively impact a patient’s quality of life, should also warrant a surgical treatment.
In order to do this, my team and I have developed diagnostic tests to ensure that a patient suffering from significant eye floaters is properly diagnosed as such, and is eligible for the floaters cure. Whereas today limited vitrectomy is the best available cure, the future may see new forms of therapy that will utilize our diagnostic methods to identify patients in need and measure their response to therapy.
– Dr. J. Sebag, MD, FACS, FRCOphth, FARVO
Listen to the full interview with Jayanth Sridhar by clicking the link below: