bn216, I think birdmancov is right. You clearly are not ready to go for FOV right now from what you say but that will probably change later in your life.

As for your question, I would say it seems to be rather easy so far as there seems to be pretty much two kind of doctors... the ones that will never do it and dismiss your problem completely (still the majority unfortunately but getting better) and the ones that will do it no matter how your floaters are. The reason for the second class is that they seem to know that they cannot see the floaters correctly by examining you so they cannot tell if your floaters are very bad for you or not. The floaters they see in the eye exams are often not even the same as the ones you see. For example, my local doctor here said "oh, yes your right eye seems bad but your left seems pretty clean" and I then said "well my right eye has the worst strand but my left eye is way worse in general in terms of quantity of crap". He was surprised but Dr. Mackool was not when I told him saying there is no real correlation between what they can se and what you see.

There is also the last bunch of doctors that are incertain and really don't want to do it at first and then as you go back and back and complain they will do it finally.

Dr. Mackool in the US will do it and Dr. Stalmans in Belgium will do it too no matter what. The only reason not to do it for them is if they find that you have a problem with your eye other than the floaters after pre-op exam and that's usually about the external side of your eye like pink eye or infection. You would know if you had that.

www.eye-floaters.com has a section with surgeons around the world who are willing to do FOV. I suggest you check it out.