Eyelid Surgery

If you are considering blepharoplasty, a consultation with Dr. Preminger is the first step towards attaining your aesthetic goals. Dr. Preminger will assess the condition of your eyes, discuss your medical history, and give you an idea of what to expect. You are invited to bring in pictures of your younger self to give her a more precise idea of the appearance you wish to restore.

Blepharoplasty is one of the most successful and satisfying operations in facial plastic surgery today. However, you must still choose a surgeon like Dr. Preminger, who understands how to minimize the risk of complications such as infection, reaction to anesthesia, dry eyes, blurry vision for a few days, edema, trouble closing the eyes, uneven healing and scarring.

Blepharoplasty procedure

Dr. Preminger often performs blepharoplasty under local anesthesia in her accredited office. This means no additional charges for anesthesia or a hospital stay! Local anesthesia with sedation decreases the amount of downtime following your procedure and alleviates the risks of nausea, respiratory depression and heart rate variability.

Once the patient is numbed and relaxed, Dr. Preminger makes an inconspicuous incision in the crease of the upper lid just below the lashes to ensure there are no visible scars.

Through this incision, fat deposits can be repositioned or removed, the muscles are tightened, and excess skin is removed and stretched smooth.

Recovery

Bruising, swelling and a little bit of tightness can be expected after eyelid surgery. The eyes can be sensitive to light and wind initially, so eye drops may be prescribed. Any adverse symptoms should clear up within two to four weeks. Most patients get back on their feet in 3-5 days and return to work in about 10 days. Contact lens wearers will need to rely on glasses for two weeks.

The true results of eyelid lift surgery can be seen in one to two months. Patients report greater self-confidence with their cheerier, refreshed look around the eyes.

Dr. Preminger will give you detailed instructions on how to speed up your recovery from blepharoplasty. These steps may include keeping your head elevated and using mild cold therapy to reduce swelling. It’s advised that you minimize unnecessary movement for the first few days.

Stock up on audiobooks, buy a few new CDs. Reading or watching TV causes the lids to open and close more often, which can increase bruising. Avoid salty foods, fish oil, and aspirin as you heal.

Video Transcription:

[B. Aviva Preminger, MD Board Certified Plastic Surgeon] One of the most common things that patients actually come in complaining to me about are tired, puffing appearing, puffy appearing eyes and it’s actually one of the first things that people notice about you and so there’s a whole range of treatments for this problem, actually and they range from really non-invasive so just using a great eye cream regularly to something a little more invasive like an eye peel, which we can use around the under-eye area, commonly helps with dark circles as well, injectibles for the tear trough area, which is the area under the eye as well really help and then we get into slightly more invasive options like laser resurfacing, particularly the lower eyelid area and then surgical procedures such as an upper and/or lower eye lift and so an upper and a lower eye lift are actually designed to treat a couple of problems.

So one of the things that happens as we age is the brows start to sag and we get extra skin of the upper eyelid. So sometimes this actually needs to be combined with a brow lift to actually elevate the brow and then the other thing we do is we actually remove the extra skin of the upper eyelid, we remove some of the fat that is pouching out of that upper eyelid to lend to that bulging appearance and we do the same thing on the lower eyelid, but on the lower eyelid there’s often not that much extra skin, but often a lot of bulging or herniating fat in that area which can really contribute to puffiness and so that can actually even be removed with an incision within the lower eyelid so that there’s no scar whatsoever and I often like to combine that with laser resurfacing of the lower eyelid for skin-tightening and one of my favorite things about doing an eye lift procedure or really any kind of eye rejuvenating procedure is that it’s so subtle and people don’t really know that you’ve had anything done, they will often just say, you know you look like you got some rest, did you go on vacation, which is I think great and just speaks to a really natural result.