Thank you for your question.
You submitted your question without a photo and you stated in your question that you underwent
a Vampire Facelift® procedure a day prior and that you have a significant bruise under
one eye.
And you’re asking, can you undergo a BBL procedure to address the bruising without
reversing the effects of Vampire Facelift®.
Well, since you haven’t submitted a photo, it’s a little difficult to assess what a
significant bruise is but I can certainly give you some guidance that can maybe help
you maybe make a decision.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon.
I have been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
I have been a significant member of the Vampire Facelift® network as a media resource when
questions come up about this extremely popular procedure.
Now, just for the sake of clarity, it’s important that I at least provide the information
about what is a true Vampire Facelift®.
The reason is that the term Vampire Facelift® has become so popular that a lot of doctors
are using it not in the spirit in the way it’s intended but rather as a generic term
to describe the use of PRP or platelet-rich plasma.
So a Vampire Facelift®, as conceived by Dr. Charles Runnels and as performed by members
of the network that have been trained and do the procedure in a specific way is essentially
a combination of using a single syringe of a hyaluronic acid filler and place it in specific
areas of the face to help restore volume and in addition, to use Vampire Facelift® concept
of PRP to specifically improve quality of the skin in various areas of the face and
to do it in a way in such that bruising is minimized so that people can get back to normal
life as quickly as possible.
So there are a lot of nuances to that method.
Now that being said, you did mention that this was under your eye and certainly as an
oculoplastic surgeon, I can tell you that the eyelid area is very vascular.
And even in the best of hands, a single needle puncture can result in a bleed and because
the area is so vascular, you can get a significant bleed.
Now that being said, I can certainly understand the temptation to undergo a procedure like
BBL or broadband light therapy to try to clear the bruise.
Now I’m going to give you my opinion and again this is my opinion as a clinician as
someone who has been doing this for a long time and someone who also owns multiple lasers
as well as having experience with IPL or pulsed light and I’ve actually moved away from
using pulse light energies therapies at this time because of alternatives that I feel are
more predictable.
I would be concerned that the use of a thermal energy device to try to breakdown the blood
maybe at the same time delivering a lot of heat into the skin in a way that would not
be necessarily beneficial to the skin.
My concern would be because eyelid skin is the thinnest skin in the body and it is very
delicate, I think that first of all, doing any pulsed light treatment in that area, of
course, you have to have eye protection.
But what kind of outcome are we going to achieve if you add a thermal energy process when there
is still the risk that go with using a thermal energy device.
You can get more bruising, you can get more issues in terms of overheating the skin and
you may be dealing with more problems than when you started.
The clearance of blood under the eye can take time but it usually resolves within a week.
And so I generally tell any patient who is dealing with a bruise is essentially wear
sunblock to protect your skin from hyperpigmentation resulting from the sun getting preferentially
absorbed by the skin and resulting in darkening.
Depending on your skin type, the relative risk varies.
But on top of that, understand that a little bit of hydration and you can probably see
the clearance of this area go from a bruise to turning different shades of yellow to disappearing.
And whether it’s this procedure or even a Botox® injection or a filler injection,
this is part of the reality and you have to be prepared for that.
I think it’s best to ask your doctor about this but I think that you don’t necessarily
have to move to doing another procedure particularly an energy procedure.
You know, one of the reasons why I kind of shifted from using IPL at this point is that
I found that the things that I want to achieve for skin rejuvenation that I was doing with
IPL and other things that IPL can do such as hair removal, etc., I found that specific
lasers whether it’s ablative or non-ablative lasers and Q-Switch lasers, I have been very
happy with being able to deliver more predictable levels of energy with lower risk in terms
of other secondary outcomes that we want to minimize.
So again, it’s a matter of a doctor’s personal choice when it comes to these different
devices and based on experience.
But for the issue of a bruise under the eye, most likely I would say, speaking as an oculofacial
plastic surgeon, bruising under the eyes can go away pretty fast and I think it’s better
to likely to be conservative and not add another variable that can further the risk of complications
in this area.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.