When Can I Use my Contacts After Eyelid Surgery?

Many of my patients ask that question. I tell my patients that they may begin using their contact lenses approximately 2 weeks after eyelid surgery. Naturally, it depends on how the patient puts in their lens. Care should be taken when inserting the lenses so as not to separate the incision. Each doctor has their own recommendation so you should ask your own physician. Good luck

I recommend my patients wait one week to wear their contact lenses after the upper and 2 weeks after the lower blepharoplasty surgery. Swelling and dryness should be increased by that time so you can comfortably wear your contact lenses. However, your surgeon is going to give you the best answer as he follows your progress.

Generally, patients should wait about two weeks before resuming contact use following eyelid surgery. I would advise you to check with your surgeon and follow his advice, however. I hope this helps.

Post op healing varies amongst patients. Most patients can resume wearing contacts after about 1 week. Be sure to check with your surgeon regarding your individual case.

Generally a safe answer for when you return to wearing contacts after eyelid surgery is 2 weeks. However, patients having only upper eyelid surgery can wear their contacts sooner. The key is to wait until any eye irritation or dry eye symptoms after the surgery have passed prior to stimulating your eye with contacts.

In some cases, when a lower eyelid surgery is performed by making an incision inside the eyelid, I recommend waiting 3 weeks until patients resume with their contacts.

I tell patients that they can resume wearing contacts at about seven days after lower eyelid surgery. Occasionally, the swelling subsides faster than expected and they are able to place them a few days sooner.
When patients have their upper lids (only), they can resume wearing contact lenses in about five days.
Again, these are only guidelines, as patients may recover differently.

If you have certain extended wear contact lenses, you may be a candidate to have your lenses in immediately. If your surgeon is comfortable with placing contact lenses, a pair of brand new lenses can  be placed by your surgeon at the conclusion of the surgery, to be left in for a week. At the one week postop visit, fresh lenses can then be placed again by your surgeon. After two weeks, you may switch back to your normal routine.
Good luck!

Contacts can be used pretty quickly after some procedures and need to be avoided after others. A simple guideline is one week after upper lid surgery and 4 weeks after lower lid surgery. Since the upper lid is not affected by pulling on the lower lid to put the contacts in, you can start using contacts much sooner after upper lid procedures. The lower lid is obviously affected by pulling on it, so I recommend being conservative and waiting 4 weeks to begin contact use after lower lid procedures. You also need to use good lubricant as it is very common to have a short bout of dry eye after this kind of surgery (upper or lower). If you can use glasses comfortably, I'd definitely recommend being conservative and giving contacts a good long break.
I hope this info helps!

Depending on lower or upper eyelids, my recommendations differ.
For lower eyelids, I advise 3 weeks due to the pulling on the lid as well as the potential for dry eyes in the early postoperative period.
For upper eyelids, I sometimes allow my paitents to return to contact lens use as long as they do not apply traction to upper eyelid and institue liberal use of ocular lubricants.

My smart aleck answer to this would be, "When your surgeon says so." Seriously, though, this is one question on which virtually all of us agree on the answer: about TWO WEEKS (three, if you really want to be super cautious).
All the best,
--DCP