What is the recovery and scars associated with a blepharoplasty?
A blepharoplasty is an eyelid lift. There is upper
blepharoplasty for your upper eyelids and lower blepharoplasty for your lower.
The upper blepharoplasty is generally an incision that is
placed in your lid crease. Your lid crease is where your eyelid folds when your
eye opens. The extra skin is generally cut out above this point. How much fat
is reduced depends on the persons eyes. Some people develop very bulging eyes
as they grow older and want this reduced so they don’t have such tired appearing
eyes. The balance there is that we, as plastic surgeons, don’t want to
skeletonize someone’s eyes either. We do have to leave some fat behind in order
to improve eyelid aesthetics.
Lower eyelid blepharoplasty can be done in a couple of
different ways. I will often do a transconjunctiva approach. This is an
incision on the inside of the eyelid, the pink part. This allows me to access
the fat pads that give people bulging lower eyelids. It also preserves some of
the anatomy that is important for maintaining this structure and integrity of
the lower eyelid. I often couple this with a skin pinch on the outside of the
eyelid to take up some of the excess skin as needed. Another common lower
blepharoplasty incision is to make an incision just underneath the eyelashes
and to cut out extra skin as well as get to the fat of the lower eyelids
through the same incision.
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