One of the most common procedures that I I do here is upper eyelid surgery or medically
known as upper blepharoplasty
I get approached about this
question very frequently because the eyes are one of the earliest places
where you see signs of
facial aging, and so a lot of patients who are requesting facial rejuvenation
will first focus on the eyes because that's really where they first see some of the changes
specifically what oftentimes patients notice is that they have a little bit of sagging
like extra skin in this upper eyelid area, and it gives them
they feel a little bit of a tired appearance and so often times patients will come saying you know I feel
my eyes look tired but I don't feel tired. I'd just like to look a little bit more
refreshed and kind of like to look more how I feel so this is very commonly what I
hear from these patients
In these patients actually often times if I take a look you'll see a little extra skin
here
patients who've waited on this for a while who have
for example more severe sagging you'll actually see the excess skin being so
much
that it would actually even sit down on the eyelashes and can actually can impair
their visual field and actually make it more difficult to open their eyes
so there's really a variety of degrees to which you'll see this
In terms of rejuvenation, typically I just see patients who have just a little bit of excess and
they'd just like to get a little bit
of improvement in that area. In terms of best candidates for the procedure,
since the procedure really involves removing a little bit of excess skin
and really trying to reshape that eyelid fold a little bit such that it looks
a little more rejuvenated
Best candidates are really patients who specifically have that exact problem
where you know oftentimes patients when they come to see me they say you
know i
look in the mirror and feel that if I could just tuck this in here, or if I just pull
this specific area of skin, if I could just remove it that would be great
Those are great candidates for the procedure because it is very
straightforward
there's a very specific anatomical surgical goal in terms of what we want
to do
and so patients get very nice results if that's the case
there's actually a subset of patients who
are good candidates for upper blepharoplasty who actually also have a separate
issue which is that their eyelids can actually droop
oftentimes this is confused with well I have extra skin here and it looks like it's drooping
but in some of these patients with this condition called eyelid ptosis,
the issue is that their eyelid margin actually sits a little bit down
over their
pupils kind of like this. For those of you who may know like the
cartoon Garfield a lot of times I'll tell patients these are patientswho have
a Garfield eyes the way
Garfield's eyes are drawn a little bit down over the pupils
those are patients who have eyelid ptosis. That is a separate
issue that can be addressed at the same time as upper blepharoplasty but it
is a separate issue
and so it's important during the examination for for me for example to
really assess
and see the eyes and really see if the patient has excess skin
and if they have in addition eyelid ptosis. Those are two separate
issues that have to be addressed surgically
In terms of procedure, the procedure itself is very straightforward
it's usually about an hour and a half long. There's a little extra time required if there's a ptosis repair that needs to be done as well
It's under local anesthesia and
pretty well tolerated. Patients essentially are draped surgically
and prepared surgically but they are awake during the procedure
with local anesthesia. They're very comfortable
In terms of post procedure recovery
afterwards you can expect a little bruising
and swelling to persist
probably most of it goes away by about two weeks or so but if there's any residual
it does continue to improve over the first six weeks to six months
but really in terms of being comfortable going out and about I say most of my patients
are comfortable going out at about two weeks
I do have a number of patients who are comfortable at about one week going out but I
always tell patients
just give yourself two weeks to make sure you have enough time
to recover so in case you do need extra time you won't feel
rushed or anxious waiting for things to recover more quickly
In terms of what to do after the procedure
I tell patients afterward I'd like you to keep your head in bed elevated
for a while usually especially for the first 48 hours I do happen do have them ice the areas we do
the operation 20 minutes with ice on and 20 minutes off
have them do that for the first 12 hours and if they can for the first 2
days
Overall the procedure is very well tolerated I'd say that
again it's probably one of the 2 most common procedures I do here
in my clinic and we get very nice results
Patients are very happy with it, it gives them a nice rejuvenated appearance
and it's a very straightforward and simple procedure