To estimate the prevalence and risk factors for vitreous floaters in the general population.
An electronic survey was administered through a smartphone app asking various demographic and health questions, including whether users experience floaters in their field of vision. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine risk factors.
A total of 603 individuals completed the survey, with 76% reporting that they see floaters, and 33% reporting that floaters caused noticeable impairment in vision. Myopes were 3.5 times more likely (P=0.0004), and hyperopes 4.4 times more likely (P=0.0069) to report moderate to severe floaters compared to those with normal vision. Floater prevalence was not significantly affected by respondent age, race, gender, and eye color.
Vitreous floaters were found to be a very common phenomenon in this non-clinical general population sample, and more likely to be impairing in myopes and hyperopes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 619. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 September 2026.
All research outputs
#45,719
of 34,307,719 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Ophthalmology
#1
of 790 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#193
of 243,706 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Ophthalmology
#1
of 11 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,307,719 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 790 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 243,706 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 11 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
