Thank you for your question!
You submitted your question and you stated in your question that you had your surgery
about 1 week ago, Asian eyelid surgery.
And you state in your question that you’re not happy with the way the crease looks and
if you want to know if it’s possible to revise the crease in the second week and you
state with certainty that if you were to wait 3 months, that you would still want a revision
because you want to have a certain look to your crease.
Well, I can certainly give you some guidance on this concern.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and
reconstructive surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and Asian
eyelid surgery is an area of expertise.
I do both primary and revision surgery for Asian eyelids, non-incisional and incisional.
So I can certainly give you a perspective based on how we do our procedures and the
process and I think that there is probably some room to allow the procedure to heal before
you draw in this conclusion.
To begin with, when I do my evaluation for a patient, first the decision is whether non-incisional
versus an incisional.
And then once we’ve decided the reason for doing one over the other, on the day of the
surgery, I spend a lot of time with my patient in terms of planning and drawing and the patient
looks at the drawing and looks at the effect because I basically use a little eyelid crease
device or a Q tip to show what the can anticipate and so there’s a clear communication of
what the expectation is.
Now, I always prepare my patient by telling them that their eyelid is going to be swollen.
It is very typical, from the eyelid margin to the crease, regardless of where you place
that crease, to become so swollen that it looks like the crease is very high and it
looks like a shape that is undesirable.
Eyelid incision and crease definition takes time to settle and it is not unusual for the
true crease, as intended during surgery, to develop over the course of several months.
So I give that patients heads up and anticipation and I’m pretty certain that your surgeon
probably told you the same.
I think that by looking at swollen eyelids is very difficult to state definitively that
you will need revision.
I would certainly advise against doing a revision in the second week.
And it’s clearly because essentially, what can we accomplish by doing some kind of a
surgery in the second week when the tissue is so swollen.
It is never desirable for a surgeon to work on swollen tissue which can be avoided.
So I think for now, you should speak to your doctor.
Ask what things are going to look like as time goes on.
I’m pretty confident that your doctor will say that everything was planned out according
to your wishes and that essentially, you have to allow time to settle out.
For my patients, I always tell them that certainly, there’s always a possibility that there
may be need for revision surgery.
That’s a nature of cosmetic surgery.
Everything is soft tissue that we’re working with and millimeters can make a difference
and there should be room for that as an option but timing is very important.
So I think that if you have the similar type of experience with your doctor, where before
surgery, everything was measured, discussed, planned, drawn and you looked at the plan
and the drawing and you saw that this was what you wanted to do, then I am confident
that an experienced cosmetic surgeon who performs Asian eyelid surgery with some consistency
will likely be able to deliver that the type of results that you are expecting.
So I don’t think you need to draw this conclusion or prediction that you would need absolutely
revision surgery.
First, communicate with your doctor, learn what is going and what to expect, review what
the plan was and as your follow-ups occur, I think you’ll see as the swelling comes
down, chances are you get closer to what you had expected and you feel a little bit confident
in the final outcome.
But again, I would not advise revision surgery in the second week.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!