There are several ways of providing anesthesia for Browlift and Blepharoplasty. The one you mention works very well. Even then, there are options. Once the areas are anesthetized, you will feel only movement, pressure and wet/cold. You may feel the injection to the nerve under the eye and the several nerves just above rim of the orbital bone that establishes the anesthesia, however. If someone like an anesthesiologist is monitoring you, they can give you an IV medication that essentially makes it where you do not even feel this. In either case, the medication used to sedate you generally makes you forget anything about the procedure. Most people awake at the end of the procedure wondering when it will begin.
The other option for these procedures, and my personal favorite, is a light general anesthesia. Instead of using IV medications for sedation, an agent that you breathe in is used. This is increased while the local anesthesia is injected and then reduced for the rest of the case. Since you do not need it for surgical anesthesia (the local does this), it is used merely to keep you comfortable. At the conclusion of the case when the anesthesiologist turns off the gas, you awaken immediately. This is because there are almost no IV drugs used that have to be metabolized in the liver before their effects are gone. Once the gas is off, you breathe out any residual gas and its effect is gone. The other advantage is a marked reduction in postoperative nausea. We almost never see any nausea, even where I am in the mountains with curvy roads to travel home post operatively. Also, with this method, you feel absolutely nothing. Because of these advantages, and the safety of the method, I have switched entirely to light general anesthesia supplemented with local injection. To use it, however, one needs to work in a facility certified for general anesthesia. Most non-certified practitioners who do not have hospital privileges in Plastic Surgery or work in a certified operative facility will not, therefore, be able to utilize this method.
