Thank you for your question.
You stated in your question has your blepharoplasty gone wrong.
And in the substance of your question, you're stating you had the surgery done one day ago,
that you had Asian Eyelid surgery, and you're stating in the question in addition that you
didn't have any skin or fat removed.
And you're concerned about the degree of swelling and the appearance of your eyelids and you’ve
submitted very good photos.
I can probably give you some ideas based on my experience.
I'm a cosmetic oculofacial plastic surgeon, practicing Manhattan and Long Island for over
20 years.
Asian Eyelid surgery is one of the areas of specialty in my practice, so I can give you
some perspective based on how we do what we do and maybe how to interpret what you're
going through right now.
First of all, it's important to understand that in the absence of a physical examination
with someone actually touching the area, seeing it first hand up close, it is still an opinion
based on a limited amount of information, just photos alone.
So based on what you described, it sounds like you had a non-incisional blepharoplasty.
Non-incisional blepharoplasty is a little bit of a misnomer because the reality is that
even for a surgery for Asian Eyelid surgery where we're not removing skin and removing
muscle or fat in order to achieve a crease, we're still making little openings and in
those little openings we're putting a suture.
That suture is engaging muscle called the levator muscle.
The levator muscle, like the word elevator, is the muscle responsible for lifting your
eyelid and for creating a crease.
Now in the photos where your eyes are closed, the crease seems very very well-defined.
And so I think that what you can probably take away from this is that you had a non-incisional
Asian blephroplasty, and that you have a significant amount of swelling afterwards.
Now it's important to for you to at least have some sense of connection with your doctor.
If you made this decision to have your doctor do this procedure for you, it seems a little
bit premature to lose faith and to start asking questions on whether something went wrong.
When we deal with eyelid surgery, you have to understand that even with minimally invasive
procedures and a lot of methods that we do in our practice, including local anesthesia,
light sedation, and other modalities, eyelid tissue is very prone to swelling and the first
48 hours can be the peak of that swelling, so I think it's very hard for anyone to make
an informed opinion based on just the photos alone.
Yes, certainly the eyelid asymmetry and the amount of swelling and the inversion of the
lashes is, in our practice, somewhat uncommon, but it doesn't mean that your doctor necessarily
performed the procedure incorrectly.
I think it's very important that you maintain communication with your doctor and follow
the instructions given as to how to manage your swelling.
For example, in our practice, we tell our patients to use cold compresses for 20 minutes
on, 20 minutes off while awake for the first two days, including the day of the surgery.
Then after that, it’s routine for us to advise the patient move around—walk, talk,
move, and open and close their eyes.
You know, a lot of times people who have had eyelid surgery, particularly Asian eyelid
surgery, where you're trying to create this crease, they'll sometimes do what I call “splinting”,
where they won't open their eyes all the way because they're afraid they'll damage something
so they keep their eyes kind of halfway open.
So I always tell patients to go ahead and look up and look up a few times a day just
to let that fold develop.
It's really a matter of allowing the fluid to get absorbed at the areas adjacent to where
the connection between the skin and the elevator muscle are.
So again, make a follow-up appointment with your doctor and allow some time for the swelling
to resolve.
I'll tell my patients that the space between the eyelid margin and the crease has a tendency
to swell and that swelling will of course be the greatest in the beginning but it can
linger for a couple of months, and in rare occasions, I've seen it linger for up to a
year.
Now it's not significant at that point but it may very well be present.
We've seen patients where it can last up to 3 months with low grade amount of swelling
in that area.
So there is some variability, but as long as the swelling is moving in the right direction
and the eyes are starting to look more aesthetically pleasing then, as is the case for most of
our patients, we send them back to work and normal life in a week or sometimes even less.
So again, it's very important to understand exactly what your doctor did, if you're not
getting details learn more, ask them for more specifics to understand what you're going
through and it may help to reduce your anxiety about what you're going through right now.
So I hope that was helpful and I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you for your question.