So eyelids, I often see men and women come in, typically, in their 40s and 50s saying “I just look tired.” When I assess someone for eyelids I’m looking for laxed skin. It’s not like you’ve developed more skin suddenly in your life, but we lose elasticity at some point in our life and that skin becomes excess because it’s not shrunk back like it used to be when you were 30.
In upper eyelid surgery, to take off just a little bit of extra skin, I frequently do it just under local anesthesia. You listen to some nice music and we just take off a little bit of extra skin. The scar is deep in the fold of the upper eyelid. It’s invisible. There can be some bruising but women can typically put make up on just a few days later.
Lower lids we have to be a little bit careful about because we don’t want to have a lid that pulls down afterwards, so I usually have you do exercises to keep that up afterwards and make sure you don’t get that kind of pulling on that lower lid. Many times we do upper lids and lower lids at the same time, and frequently for those I’ll put you to sleep. It takes about an hour or maybe less, maybe about 45 minutes. Bruising does happen.
I did my wife’s best friend and she had make up on in three days and my wife said “Let me do that too.” And I did my wife’s lids and she had bruising for a week, so it’s a bit variable but that certainly can happen. Really cleans up the eyes and cleans up the face. It’s often the first place to see aging so it’s often that something that I do in a 40 something year old woman whose says “My eyes look old,” and the rest of the face looks great.
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