Thank you for your question.
You submitted a question without a photo but you are asking when can you wear your contacts
lenses after cosmetic upper and lower eyelid surgery.
Well, I can certainly assist you with this question.
This is a question that comes up pretty much every day in our practice.
A little bit of background, I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon.
I’ve been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years.
Cosmetic eyelid surgery is something we do in our practice every day and this issue with
or question about contact lenses wear comes up very frequently.
So the way I first answer this question is by understanding a little bit about the person’s
eye health and the dependency on contact lenses.
For example, if someone has a very severe nearsightedness or myopia or has a condition
like keratoconus, they’re very dependent on their contact lenses to function.
So, I try to figure out how to facilitate that process so that they can wear their contact
lenses sooner rather than later.
As a general rule, I look at the patient in terms of also their state of comfort with
wearing contact lenses.
Now it is almost a given that someone who can tolerate contact lenses has adequate tear
production to be able to lubricate those lenses.
Now there are exceptions.
Sometimes you manage dry eyes with contact lenses but that’s a therapeutic issue.
But in terms of eyelid surgery, I explain the following: anytime you operate in the
area around the eyes, there is going to be some degree of temporary dryness.
So, as far as wearing contact lenses, I tell my patients that you can pretty much wear
your contact lenses after about a week.
The reason why I used the one-week time frame is that one, antibiotic ointment has to be
applied if you are having upper eyelid surgery to the stitches on the upper eyelid.
If you are having lower eyelid surgery and typically we do this procedure from a transconjunctival
approach, you are putting ointment on the inside of the eyelid.
Now that means that invariably, some of that ointment gets mixed in with your tears and
getting ointment on contact lenses can get messy and it can be difficult to clean those
lenses.
In addition, I also advise patients to understand that when you have surgery around the eyes
that your eyes can be slightly dryer than they are baseline.
It’s just a normal part of the swelling-induced diminishing of lacrimal function of the tear
glands that are embedded in the conjunctival part that produce the tears that produce baseline
tear film.
What I tell people is that they should carry around some contact lens solution.
So for a couple of weeks after they are done with their surgery, they use this contact
lens re-wetting drops, specifically re-wetting solutions to allow lubrication in case the
eyes feel a little bit dry.
On average, pretty much at one week, I am comfortable with people wearing their contact
lenses and we’ve never had any significant issues with that.
I always, having an eye surgery background and ophthalmology background, I get into the
details of what their vision statuses as well as their ocular health status so I can give
them guidance on how the eyelid surgery can actually affect their contact lens wear.
There are also times where we actually do a procedure like a lateral tarsal strip or
something to help support the lower eyelid in a way that actually improves tear function
and tear distribution.
And I always tell them that there is actually a potential benefit to the eyelid surgery
in terms of helping contact lens wear.
A lot of times people develop ptosis, they develop laxity and sometimes contact lens
wear can have some role directly or indirectly.
Directly, let’s say wearing of hard or soft contact lenses, the upper eyelid kind of rubs
against the lens and causes some thinning of the tissue maybe resulting in ptosis.
And with lower eyelids, I feel like people pull their eyelids sometimes aggressively
to put contact lenses in and that can put the lower eyelid on stretch as well as other
ocular factors can affect the impact of contact lens wear on eyelid surgery.
And then, of course, we have to figure out how to adjust the eyelid surgery to optimize
the ability to wear contact lenses.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!