Dr. Stephen Sinclair

The infection needs to be cultured. Go to your primary care doctor or ER (your eye doctor probably does not have capability).

Although testing the pressure of the eye is commonly used, the most important testing is to take special images of the retina and optic nerve and do visual field testing at bright levels and reduced lighting (to evaluate vision while in that romantic restaurant or while driving at night).

The lens in your eye is like the lens of a camera, but it is a bag of gel that is pulled on by a muscle inside your eye that changes the focus. As you age, the gel becomes hardened and crystallized, reducing the ability to focus well, but doesn't change the color or intensity of the image, or cause distortions of the image of an eye, problems with the film (retina) in the back or optic nerve.

No, there are no drops for floaters. Use image enhancing lenses out of doors. Go to a pro shop or spectacle shop where you can look outside and try on, probably yellow or pale brown lenses.

Both are poor, only irrigate the eye, but do not treat the cause, inflammation of the back of the eyelids.

You cannot prevent floaters, only reduce their effect in bright light with yellow or pale brown lenses.

Yes, especially Corona Virus. Do not rub your eyes.

Undergo special vision testing = reduced color and contrast of the vision in the eye

No

Once a year

See your doctor

Not normally unless your spectacles are poorly focused and the lens inside your eyes change. There are some training therapy programs but these are rare and unfortunately we don't know which cases respond well. But view the lecture: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9370-hacking_how_we_see

Fish oils help a small amount with "evaporative" dry eye in which the oil glands in the lids are blocked due to inflammation on the back side of the lids. Hot, moist compresses while applying pressure toward downward on the upper lids and upward on the lower lids (for 5 minutes twice a day) help even more to get more oils going.

How long have the floaters been present and what shapes do they take? New onset floaters most often gradually become less noticeable over time but will take a few months. If the floaters came on all of a sudden and are black spiders or strings you should see an ophthalmologist immediately

There is no evidence that they help the eyes. I would recommend, if you have to look at a monitor most of the day or paper under fluorescent lighting, get pale yellow (night driving) lenses that clip on your regular spectacles, or if you don't wear spectacles in the office, get the pale yellow glasses in a sporting goods store (used for target shooting)- that will make your vision much more comfortable.

New onset of many floaters or string like floaters can be the sign of the vitreous gel shrinking and pulling away from the retina in the back of the eye. We worry in the process that the retina may be torn (resulting in a detachment), so if these are numerous and stringlike, or associated with tractional flashes (lightning like) then you should see a retina specialist immediately.

Essentially the same purpose- to create a scar around the tear to seal it, preventing a retinal detachment from ongoing vitreous traction on the tear. The laser is applied when the tears are more toward the back and the vitreous is clear so that the laser can be aimed back to the retina. Cryo is applied when the tears are in the retina more toward the from of the eye or if there is blood in the vitreous gel. Both have the same rate of success (failure about 5-7%). Either procedure needs to be done immediately to protect the eye against progressing to a retinal detachment

Floaters are caused by the vitreous gel, which is solid in the young person, but with aging in all of us it pulls away from the retina in the back of the eye (posterior vitreous gel detachment). In some eyes it may pull small bits and pieces out of the inner retina that are then stuck on the back of the gel that floats inside the eye with eye movements. Floaters, most often with time, as the gel pulls further from the retina,, are less focused and pull more toward the side. However in some eyes they remain annoying in the central vision, but can be removed. This has been tried with an office based laser procedure in but in general is not that successful, especially with diffuse cloudy floaters. The floaters can be removed by vitreous surgery, in which a microscopic roto-rooter is inserted into the eye and sucks out the gel, replacing it with a clear fluid. Within 24 hours it is replaced by your own fluid that is constantly pumped in to keep the pressure constant in the eye. The vitrectomy surgery is done under local mac anesthesia in the operating room and is much like cataract surgery with drops afterward. There are potentially fairly rare complications, as with any surgery that you should discuss with your ophthalmologist.

Glaucoma is a problem with the pressure inflating the eye. Sometimes the pressure can rise too high, causing injury to the optic nerve in the back (where all of the nerve fibers from the retina (the film lying against the inside back that takes the picture and then sends the image to the brain through a hole in the back of the globe= the optic nerve). When the pressure stays too high, the nerves are progressively eroded, causing loss of vision that is most often worse in the peripheral vision. Therefore glaucoma is followed by three tests, the measurement of the pressure inflating the eye, pictures taken of the optic nerve, and measurements of ability to see spots of light flashed in the peripheral vision (your head is placed in a big white bowl and the spots are flashed around the sides, with you responding by pushing a button when you see each one.

This very likely means that you have problems with the retina, the film in the back of the eye that takes the picture (as opposed to the focusing by the lens in the front). You need to have special pictures taken of the retina yearly to diagnose and prevent such problems from developing such as macular degeneration or diabetic macular problems. They cannot be seen by the doctor just examining the back of the eye through the pupil.