Vitrectomy

Vitrectomy is a surgery to remove some or all of the vitreous humor from the eye.

Anterior vitrectomy entails removing small portions of the vitreous humor from the front structures of the eye—often because these are tangled in an intraocular lens or other structures.

Pars plana vitrectomy is a general term for a group of operations accomplished in the deeper part of the eye, all of which involve removing some or all of the vitreous humor—the eye's clear internal jelly.

Even before the modern era, some surgeons performed crude vitrectomies. For instance, Dutch surgeon Anton Nuck (1650–1692) claimed to have removed vitreous by suction in a young man with an inflamed eye. In Boston, John Collins Warren (1778–1856) performed a crude limited vitrectomy for angle closure glaucoma.