Retinal detachment occurs when the retina becomes separated from the nerve tissues and blood supply underneath it. While painless, visually this has a clouding effect that has been likened to a gray curtain moving across the field of vision.

Retinal detachment is a treatable condition, but it must be taken care of promptly, or it can cause vision loss and in the worst cases, blindness.

Types of Retinal Detachment

• Rhegmatogenous. This is the most common kind. It happens because of a retinal tear. Age usually causes it, as the vitreous gel that fills your eyeball pulls away from your retina. You can also have it because of an eye injury, surgery, or nearsightedness.
• Tractional. This type happens when scar tissue pulls on your retina, usually because diabetes has damaged the blood vessels in the back of your eye.
• Exudative. This kind happens when fluid builds up behind your retina, but there’s no tear. The fluid pushes your retina away from the tissue behind it. Common causes include leaking blood vessels and swelling because of conditions such as an injury, inflammation, or age-related macular degeneration.

Causes of Retinal Detachment

The retina is attached to the vitreous, the clear gel in the middle of our eye. As we age, the vitreous may shrink and sometimes during the process of the vitreous shrinking it may remain partially attached to the retina, and tug on it. The resulting movement of the retina’s nerve cells can cause eye flashes. Normally, this doesn't cause any issues but in some cases, it can tug enough to tear the retina allowing eye fluid to enter it. As fluid gets in, it pushes the retina away from the supportive tissue underneath it, causing separation, and eventually, detachment.

Retinal detachment can also be caused by injury from blunt trauma and certain eye conditions such as advanced diabetic eye disease and severe nearsightedness.

Symptoms of Retinal Detachment

Retinal detachment itself is painless. But warning signs almost always appear before it occurs or has advanced, such as:

• The sudden appearance of many floaters — tiny specks that seem to drift through your field of vision
• Flashes of light in one or both eyes (photopsia)
• Blurred vision
• Gradually reduced side (peripheral) vision
• A curtain-like shadow over your visual field

Treatment of Retinal Detachment

Surgery has proven a highly successful treatment for retinal detachment, provided the condition has been detected early enough. To ensure that treatment can be effective, anyone experiencing the symptoms above should be given medical attention within 24 hours.

Typical surgical procedures include:

• Laser surgery: Repairs tears in the retina that are the underlying cause of separation
• Cryopexy: Applies intense cold to the underlying tissue, causing a scar to develop that holds the retina in place.
• Pneumatic retinoplexy: a tiny gas bubble is placed in the eye that floats the retina back into place; usually accompanied by laser surgery to ensure the retina stays in correct position permanently.
• Scleral buckle: suturing a silicone “buckle” to the eye that indents the wall of the eye into a position that allows the retina to reattach.

Media Contact:

Sarah Rose

Journal Manager Journal of Eye Diseases and Disorders

Email: eyedisorders@emedsci.com

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