What to Look For
The symptoms of retinal tears sometimes include sudden, unexplained flashes of light and moving black spots in the vision called "floaters." In most cases, these symptoms do not indicate serious eye problems; they can, however, indicate a substantial shrinking of the vitreous and attendant retinal tears.

If you experience floaters or flashes, please call to arrange an eye exam. New retinal tears may be easily treated before they lead to a more severe retinal detachment.

Symptoms of Detachment
When part of the retina detaches, the rods and cones are pushed and pulled out of their normal orientation and no longer work properly. The result can often be the raped appearance of a dark shadow in the field of vison; a wavy or watery quality to vison; a blurring or blind spot.

Some detachments can occur very suddenly, causing the patient to experience total loss of vision in the affected eye.

Detection and Diagnosis
There are numerous tools and techniques your doctor may use to examine the retina. The ophthalmoscope is frequently used to examine both the central and peripheral retina. In both procedures, your pupils will first be dilated, allowing the retina to be examined under bright light and magnification.

The slit lamp combines a microscope with strong illumination. It is often used with a hand-held lens, allowing doctors to see portions of the retina in far greater detail.

Some patients are given an intravenous injection of fluorescein dye in a procedure called "fluorescein angiography." The dye, which takes only moments to reach the eye, makes tiny blood vessels visible, enabling photographs to be taken for later study.

Treatment of Retinal Tears
Usually, retinal tears are the edges of the eye and affect only your peripheral vision; doctors often monitor small breaks without treatment.

If treatment is determined to be appropriate, however, your doctor will probably recommend either cryotherapy or laser treatment.

In cryotherapy, a local anesthetic is applied to the eye and the small area around the break is completely frozen with a probe. As the frozen area heals, it forms scar tissue which reattaches the retinal layers at the point of the break. Lasers use an intense beam of energy to, in effect, weld layers of the retina back together, again by causing scar tissue to form.

Treatment For Detachment
Once a significant amount of fluid has collected behind the retina, a more complicated surgical procedure is required. Reattachment surgery is done under general anaesthesia. In most cases, retinal breaks will first be located and sealed, using either diathermy, where electrical current is applied through a needle, or cryotherapy.

Next, the vetreous fluid is drained from behind the transparent layer. Finally, a silicon band is sewed to or wrapped around all or part of the eye to indent it and push the retinal layers back into contact with each other. In some cases, the vetreous cavity of the eye will be temporarily filled with fluid or gas to flatten the retina against the wall.

The scar issue which forms around the tears rattaches and holds the layers together.

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