Hi Maple96,A lower eyelid surgery will not help with tear troughs. To remove more fat under the eye, will only make the area look darker. It is already hollow and concave. To reduce shadowing of a concave area, it needs to either be flat or convex. Your options are either fat grafting, fillers or a tear trough implant. For patients under 40, I tend to recommend fillers over fat grafting. Fillers are bio-inert, meaning it is not alive and will not grow with weight gain or shrink with weight loss. For patients under 40 who are women, there is the possibility that they may become pregnant, and the fat grafted area can actually grow in volume out of sync with the rest of the face with the pregnancy or weight gain. For this reason, I prefer fillers in particular Restylane. The main draw back with fillers is that it requires repeated treatments to maintain the result, typically in the 12-24 month range. The filler naturally dissipates at a very slow rate, not dissimilar to the rate of volume loss with natural aging. The other benefit is that if for any reason the filler does not look good, it can be dissolved with an antidote called vitrase. The other recent topic of interest with injectable fillers is potential infection with the filler which is treatable with antibiotics, but once the filler is contaminated with bacteria, it should be dissolved away completely and start over or switch to fat grafting as an alternative.The benefit of fat grafting is that the fat is alive and has a blood supply. If there is an infection of the fat grafted area (like a pimple) any antibiotics that you take will be able to be delivered into the fat because of the blood supply. The filler does not have a blood supply so infections are more of an issue. Interestingly, most temporary fillers have not had an infection issue in the smile lines and lips (which is less clean than other area) probably because it tends to dissolve much faster in either 4-6 months for Restylane or 9-12 months for Juvederm. In those areas, it probably dissolves before there is a chance for infection.Interestingly, Restylane which only lasts 4-6 months in those areas is lasting much longer in the lower eyelid tear trough area. If it is lasting 12-24 months or longer, we should be thinking of it as an implant, such as a silicone chin implant, or a silicone tear trough implant, or cheek implant. Pacemakers and joint replacements are also implants. If these implants get an infection which does not clear with oral antibiotics or IV antibiotics, most likely the implant has developed a biofilm or a film of bacteria which cannot be "cleaned off" of the implant. These implants would need to be surgically removed and replaced either at a separate surgery or at the same time depending on the surgeon or extend of the infection.For the injectable fillers, the way to remove this type of "implant" it is to dissolve it instead of surgically removing it. Depending on how it was injected it most likely will take more than one session to completely dissolve the filler. The chance of this happening is much lower than 1%. There has been more discussion of this rare problem in national conferences for dermatology and cosmetic surgery.I use Dermasculpt microcannulas when performing these injections to reduce the chance for bruising. To see examples of what fillers such as Restylane can achieve for the lower eyelid hollowing such as tear troughs or even bona fide eyebags, please click on the web reference link to see some examples.Best,Dr. YangP.S. There is a new feature on Realself, which is the "Follow" button. It is similar to the "Like" button on Facebook. If you like my response or any of the doctor responses while you research on Realself, you should "Follow" them. You will get email updates, when the doctors you follow post any new answers to questions, post new photos, or have any new reviews.
