3 months post op, I'm still swollen.
Is this normal?
I'm a little over 3 months post op.
I notice my eyes are uneven.
It didn't bother me before.
And I really like them now than before but are my eyes still swollen?
My left eyelid is higher than my right.
My scar on my left eye is almost gone.
But you notice how it's a higher incision than my right?
My right eye scar is bumpy.
I heard that once the scars are gone, then the swelling is gone, is that true?
I need some reassurance.
Thank you for question!
It’s been 3 months since your Asian eyelid surgery and obviously an incisional type where
skin was probably removed and probably some fat and you’re describing the left eyelid
crease being higher as well as the bumpiness of the right upper eyelid crease and you have
questions about level of swelling and the correlation of the degree of healing of the
incision.
So I’m just going to start by clarifying for you what surgical wound healing ultimately
is.
Surgical healing which means anywhere you’ve done any surgery whether it’s a simple laceration
closure or a more complex surgery.
You are dealing with a timeframe where wound healing can take up to a year.
Therefore, the correlation of the incision healing and swelling being also gone at the
same time doesn’t really apply.
Swelling or fluid is caused by a variety of reasons.
One part of the basis of swelling is reactive swelling, swelling after the surgery.
It’s like any trauma.
Surgery is controlled trauma.
Other issues related to swelling have to do with fluid stasis.
In other words, there’s fluid just sticking around in the circulation, the lymphatic system.
There’s a dynamic process of wound remodeling and goes on in the cellular level that leaves
the results of any surgery to take as long as year to fully appreciate.
Now that doesn’t mean functionally, people can’t look good.
When we do Asian eyelid surgery, most of our patients get back to work in a week and most
people can look pretty good within a month.
But, I can always tell that there may be a mild degree of swelling that we want to go
down as we do the follow-up visits in 3 months, 6 months or 12 months.
So, swelling can be a factor and it is individual as to how much swelling you’ll have.
In our practice, we actually tried to develop a process to minimize the active swelling.
So whether we do Asian eyelid surgery using the non-incisional method or the excisional
method or even when we do more complex procedures such as ptosis surgery for Asian eyelid surgery
where we’re actually working on the muscle called the levator which needs to be advanced
and is a longer procedure and is more involved, we still get our patients looking pretty good
pretty fast.
But again, the swelling and the other factors can take a little bit of time.
I think that communicating with your surgeon whom you must have chosen based on your research
on the level of experience be able to guide you on what to expect based on your healing
process and then you can decide if any enhancement is necessary.
But at 3 months, it is still a little premature to anticipate or to project that this the
appearance that’s going to be beyond a year.
So it’s important to make observations but at the same time, keep an open communication
line with your surgeon so that you can keep being evaluated and examined and then you
can understand where you’re heading.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!