Ask Dr. Rude: Blepharoplasty Recovery and Scars

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. 

image via