“Rough night last night?” “Are you feeling OK?” “Didn’t get much sleep last night?”
Thanks to aging and sagging skin, it doesn’t matter how healthy you feel or how much rest you get, your eyes can tell a different story, and you want to change the narrative. You're not alone.
Eyelid surgery — also called blepharoplasty — perennially ranks in the top three cosmetic surgeries in the United States, holding the No. 2 spot in 2020 with more than 325,000 procedures.
If you want to figure out whether you’re a good candidate for blepharoplasty, Dr. Trent Fogleman and the team here at Cosmetic Surgery Center take a closer look at eyelid surgery in this month’s blog post.
Your eyes are often among the first areas of your body to register the effects of aging thanks to sensitive and thin skin that’s exposed to the elements.
In areas where your skin is thicker, the breakdown of collagen and elastin takes longer to become evident, but in the skin around your eyes, the effects come much sooner. As a result, drooping eyelids and bags under your eyes can make you look older than you are, and certainly older than you feel on the inside.
As an anti-aging and revitalization tool, eyelid surgery is certainly one of the most effective. In one outpatient procedure, we can open up your eyes to the world again, giving you a more alert and vital appearance.
We can perform eyelid surgery on your upper lids, your lower lid areas, or both, depending on your goals.
With your upper eyelids, we make a small incision in the natural crease of your lids, and we remove the excess skin and remove or redistribute fat. We can also tighten loose muscles in your lids.
For your lower lids, we make incisions in your lash lines and then remove or redistribute the fat deposits that create the bags under your eyes. If your lower lids are pulling away from your eyes, we can tighten them.
As we mentioned, we perform this procedure on an outpatient basis, which means you’re free to go home the same day. For the next week, you should take it easy while you heal. In about 7-10 days, you’ll be ready to debut the new, more vital, you.
Eyelid surgery isn’t major surgery, but it’s still surgery and there are a few considerations when choosing this procedure.
For starters, it’s best if you’re a nonsmoker and are in good health. If you have a preexisting illness that can slow down healing, we may look for alternatives for your eyes. This also holds true if you have a bleeding disorder or an eye disorder or disease.
If you’re pregnant, an elective surgery like this is best put off until after you give birth.
Other than health issues that may preclude you from surgery, we’ve found that most of our patients are good candidates for eyelid surgery.
If you’d like to figure out whether eyelid surgery is right for you, we invite you to contact our office in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to schedule a consultation.
