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  • Droopy Upper Eyelid Causes and Surgical Solutions
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Mehryar Ray Taban, I'm an oculoplastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. Today I'll be talking about droopy upper lids and what causes it and what options you have for its management.

Droopy upper lid is when the upper lid is heavy and droopy. Now that has to do with three things and... which happens over the aging process. One is that there's a muscle that lifts up the upper lid. That muscle is, when it loosens, when the tendon loosens, that's... your eyelid drops. That's called ptosis. And to fix that, you need to tighten the muscle to lift up the upper lid. It's called ptosis surgery.

The other thing that can give the illusion of droopy eyelid is when you have extra skin because one of the things that happens with aging is the upper lid skin loses elasticity and stretches. So the skin sort of hangs out over the eyelid margin, and for that, you need the upper blepharoplasty to take off some of the extra skin. Again, that doesn't lift the eyelid, it just cleans up the upper lid area. And that usually is complementary to ptosis surgery. A lot of people need both.

The third thing happens with upper eyelid area that causes droopy eyelid is that the brows come down, makes the upper eyelid heavy and crowded. So in that case, you actually need a brow lift, not an actual eye lift or blepharoptosis surgery. A lot of people as I said need one, two, or three surgeries combined. All the surgeries can be done with a local anesthesia, with or without I.V. sedation. The recovery period is about 10 days of having a black eye, and during that time, no exercising or heavy lifting. But you can still see, function, walk around. To see an oculoplastic surgeon, to realize what the actual cause of the droopy eyelid is in your case, and what options we have that's appropriate in your case.

Droopy Upper Eyelid Causes and Surgical Solutions

Dr. Mehryar Taban defines droopy eyelids and suggests several surgical solutions to lift the eyelids.