What is the best procedure to improve my under eye bags?
I'm 30 years old. I've had under eye bags all my life but they are becoming larger as
I've aged. My mother (who I inherited my bags from) had a procedure 20 years ago that left
her under eyes "hollow looking." She now received filler treatments to correct the hollowed
look. I would really love to eliminate these bags but not sure if this is something that
I can use filler for or if a surgical procedure will be necessary (which I'm a little bit
nervous about given my mother’s experience.)
Thank you for your question!
You stated in your question that this under eye bags is something that you inherited from
your mother and you want a strategy on how to address the under eye bags but you also
are concerned that your mother looked hollow and now is getting filler. So you’re concerned
about what to do so that you don’t experience the same thing as your mother.
Well, let’s begin with the diagnosis and of course, I can’t assume what type of surgery
your mother had. In a patient like yourself, who is 30 years old, we’ll perform a procedure
called transconjunctival blepharoplasty. This is a procedure where we approach the fat pockets
from the inside of the eyelids. Now, it may be possible that your mother had an external
approach or a transcutaneous blepharoplasty and it might have resulted in the eyelids
pulling down a little bit. I can’t assume that, but a lot of times when people have
this history of knowing about a hollow look, very often it’s that. And it’s actually
called eyelid retraction. So with transconjunctival approach, we’re able to avoid that by the
method and technique and this way we address the fat pockets.
In addition, what we do in our practice is we use something called platelet-rich plasma
which is derived from your own blood and this is the healing growth factors that are necessary
for wound healing that will also improve skin quality.
Now as far as the filler that your mother needs to deal with hollowing, you have to
understand that as we get older, we lose volume. And so, there isn’t a single surgical procedure
that is going to last forever in terms of a global aging process. So the bags that we
would treat you, someone in your 30s now will still be stable because you won’t have those
fat pockets again but it doesn’t stop the rest of the face from aging. So you have to
think about that in that context. As you get older, volume loss occurs and if you want
to maintain a certain look, you use fillers, implants and different things appropriately.
But for the time being, at this point, with the puffy bags under the eyes, I think for
someone like yourself, we would perform transconjunctival lower eyelid blepharoplasty under local anesthesia
with LITE™ and within our office facility. We get most of our patients back to work in
about a week.
With new techniques and technology emerging, I don’t think you assume that you parallel
your mother’s experience. So meet with doctors and learn more about your options and certainly
get into the context of the ongoing process of facial aging. If we’re lucky, we get
older and have these problems.
That being said, I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you
for your question!