Warning signs which need emergency treatment to prevent loss of eyesight!

If you have severe myopia (nearsighted above 5–6 diopters) and are over 40 - although a young girl (9) with perfect sight was in hospital with me - you have a 1 in 20 chance versus 1 in 300 for the general population. I am talking about retinal tears and detachments. If not treated correctly within 24 hours, it may lead to permanent blindness. Watch out for tiny flashlights when it’s dark, e.g. when you “jump” into bed. The second warning sign is partial loss of peripheral vision. Test this by looking straight ahead; stretch your arms sideways while moving both arms up and down. You should be able to see the movement, without looking to the left or right – if there's an area where your hand seems to disappear behind a black "curtain" (while the other one is still visible), or the “curtain“ covers the whole field of vision, see an ophthalmologic surgeon urgently.  A third sign is a sudden increase of floaters (little "cobwebs", or thousands of tiny specks / grains of dark sand that float about in your field of vision). It could be accompanied by blurred vision almost like a dense fog and could happen within hours – act immediately! An easy way to describe retinal detachment is to compare it with a stamp on an envelope. Once there’s a tear, liquid from the vitreous gel can pass through the tear and accumulate behind the retina. The build-up of fluid behind the retina is what separates (detaches) it from the back of the eye like the stamp on paper when put into water.