BLEPHAROPLASTY

Hi I’m Dr. Paul Gardner and I have with me my lovely Office Manager Brittany and today we’re going to discuss Blepharoplasty.

Well what is Blepharoplasty? It’s a fancy doctor’s term that refers simply to eyelid lifts and when we discuss eyelid lifts obviously there’s both an upper eyelid lift and a lower eyelid lift and so I’m going to demonstrate some of the things that we do with this particular type of surgery on Brittany.

The upper eyelid skin is very thin and as we age it gets in excess, obviously Britney doesn’t have much because she’s not aging, but this is the skin that we go after when we do upper Blepharoplasty. It’s very thin and it comes right along this little line right here.

As we age, sometimes that skin can get in such excess that it can actually cause problems with vision and in that circumstance it may actually be covered by insurance. But it has to be enough skin that hangs over the eyelid itself to obstruct visual fields. The other thing that we’ll often take out when we’re doing the upper lid Blepharoplasty is a little bit of the fat and there’s fat that bulges in the corner of the eye and above the eye and it can make the eye look very puffy and that circumstance will not only take out the skin but will also take out the fat.

When we talk about lower lid Blepharoplasty we’re talking about the area underneath the eyelid that is bordered by this tear trough and sometimes people will have puffiness of their eyes and they’ll wonder “why are my lower lids so puffy?” well that also is fat and that fat usually cushions the eyeball and what happens as we age is sometimes that fat will press out and bulge and look puffy. It makes you look tired and sleepy, so we’ll often go in through an incision right underneath the eyelid so it’s hidden very well it comes out a little bit into one of the creases will lift up the skin and the muscle and we’ll take some of that fat out.

The other things we do along with that is release the muscle from this bone so that it can tighten up that lower lid and give it a nice clean smooth appearance and so not only do we take out skin but we’ll also take out some of the fat and tighten up that muscle and that’s what a lower lid Blepharoplasty is.