What to Know When Considering Blepharoplasty
By Dr. Rishavy
Let’s do a simple exercise together. Bring your hands to your brow as if you were shading your eyes from the sun. Notice how your visual field reduces drastically as you try to glance upward. Now, slowly lower your hands and notice how your visual field reduces even more. Try to look around.
Living with baggy eyelids feels a lot like this. It’s frustrating. It makes everyday activities, like driving or walking, more difficult.
Thankfully, there’s a cosmetic procedure called blepharoplasty that can provide relief for you or your loved one if you’re experiencing this. Let’s unpack who it’s for, how the procedure is performed, and why it’s effective.
What Causes Baggy Eyelids?
Gravity. It’s easy to see how it affects falling objects in real time, but what we don’t always appreciate is how this force takes a toll on our bodies over the course of decades. That’s why we most commonly see baggy eyelids in older adults (though it’s important to note that young people can also experience baggy eyelids due to hormones, eye trauma, and other factors). And gravity doesn’t just affect the skin and tissue around the eyes. It also causes sagging in the jaw, neck, breasts, and other areas of the body.
Other common culprits for baggy eyelids are thinning skin and weakening muscles around the eyes, both of which also come with age. Medically, this is known as “dermatochalasis,” which causes hooding of the eyelid skin as well as bags under the eye, or “blepharoptosis,” in which the actual margin of the upper eyelid is abnormally low.
No matter the cause of you or your loved one’s baggy eyelids, the common debilitating effect is a visual field deficit. This is usually what brings patients to our practice.
How Are Eyelifts Performed?
The key to opening up that visual field so a patient can see better is to remove the excess skin in the eyelids and lift the brow. To do that, a board-certified plastic surgeon will make small incisions around the eyelid to open and brighten up the area. For the vast majority of patients, we also make small incisions along the brow and upper forehead in order to perform a brow lift. This lifting and repositioning of tissue in the upper forehead combined with the removal of excess skin in the eyelid both rejuvenates the upper face and opens up the patient’s peripheral vision.
For patients who experience lower eyelid puffiness or bagginess, we will make small incisions along the side of the eye and underneath the eye to remove the puffiness, resuspend the lower eyelid, and rejuvenate the area. This can help to address lower eyelid laxity which is known to cause irritation and occasional dry eye.
Is Blepharoplasty Right for Me?
If you or a loved one is experiencing eyelid or brow bagginess that affects your visual field or creates puffiness around the eyes, then you may be a good candidate for surgery. The first step to finding relief is to schedule a consultation. At Northland Plastic Surgery, our consultations give you an opportunity to meet with a board-certified plastic surgeon to discuss your symptoms. We will conduct a simple visual field test to confirm your diagnosis and determine a potential treatment plan to open your visual field and create a more youthful, rejuvenated appearance altogether. Give us a call at 218-724-7363 to schedule your consultation today.