Your eye is shaped a little like a table tennis ball. The hollow inside in your eye is filled with a jelly called vitreous. When you are born this is solid and smooth like gelatine in the refrigerator. At some stage in your life your vitreous changes to bits of skin floating in a watery but still slightly sticky fluid. We call these bits of skin floaters. Many patient have floaters before cataract surgery and ask if cataract surgery will get rid of floaters. Cataract surgery does not as the procedure is performed at the front and not in the very middle of the eye. Floaters may be worse after cataract surgery if the vitreous in the middle is disturbed. Rarely, floaters may very significantly increase, along with flashes of light and a dark shadow drawing across vision from any direction. This may be a rare (1/100 patients) retinal detachment and if these symptoms occur you should contact your surgeon’s rooms and obtain a dilated eye examination the same day if possible.
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