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  • What Is Blepharoplasty? Rewind the Clock With an Eyelid Lift
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Blepharoplasty is a procedure where we remove skin and puffiness around the eyes. Basically it's a procedure you use to rejuvenate the eyes. On the upper eye lid as we get older, many of us start to get skin that hangs over up our lid that fall down onto our eyelashes. In fact, many women feel like they have to lift up their eyebrows to put mascara on. That's a sign that they're having a lot of skin in the upper eyelid that's getting crowded, and we can remove that skin. It's a pinch of skin that we remove from the upper eyelid. The stitch is there for about a week, and then they are taken out, and most patients return back to normal lifestyle within a week or 10 days feeling pretty good about themselves.

Lower eyelids are a little bit different. Sometimes incisions are made on the inside of the eyelids. Some of the puffiness that people get are on their eyes, that puffiness that makes them look tired, that puffiness that other people ask them if they have allergies or they're sick, even though they're not, that puffiness is usually fat. As we get older, it tends to prolapse out and tends to poof out. We can remove that fat quite easily by making incisions on the inside of the eyelid, teasing out the fat, removing it, and then oftentimes a laser procedure is done on the outside of the eyelid or a little bit of a fat. I know it sounds paradoxical, but a little bit of fat is put into the hollow to smooth it out. That is a way to rejuvenate the eyes. Other times, we have to remove some skin if there's a lot of excess skin in the lower eyelids, and if that is the case, then a tiny incision is made under the eyelid, disolvable stitches are put in there, but a little bit of skin is removed.

Those are the options for eyelids. Most patients when they get an eyelid procedure or a blepharoplasty are able to return to the normal lifestyle within 10 days to 2 weeks feeling very good about themselves. Bruising and swelling can happen, but if patients are not on blood thinners and we usually give a list of what those blood thinners are, they can vary from aspirin, vitamin E, fish oil, natural supplements such as ginger, ginkgo biloba, garlic, ginseng, all those that's important that patients are on them for a week or 10 days before surgery. If they're not, the chances of bruising are much less likely and most patients don't bruise that badly. They're able to get back to normal lifestyle pretty quickly.

What Is Blepharoplasty? Rewind the Clock With an Eyelid Lift

Dr. Steven Dayan explains a blepharoplasty procedure and how profound an effect it can have on the patient's life.