Upper Blepharoplasty/Eyelid Lift 101 (Ep. 56)

Welcome to the Trillium Show, where we help you make the changes that you want to see in your mind, in your body, in your life. I'm your host, Dr. Jason Hall. All right, so today we're going to be talking about upper blepharoplasty surgery. Upper blepharoplasty surgery is one of the most common facial procedures that we perform in the United States and is a really common procedure that people call in requesting because they feel like they've got upper eyelid skin excess or that they look tired.

And a blepharoplasty is one of those procedures that we use really to treat the emotional side of things. People are treating a feeling. You look tired. You look haggard. And it's important before we jump into surgery to figure out, just like we do in every other surgery, figure out what the problem is so that we can come up with the right solution.

In upper eyelid surgery, it's really important that we consider the eyes as a unit. We look not only at the upper lid skin excess, which is what most people see, but we also look at the position of the eyebrows and we look at the position of the upper eyelid itself because if either one of those are not in the proper position, it can influence the procedures that we need to do and can also Contribute to suboptimal results if we miss something that's there because we're just focusing on the skin.

The things that we really need to look at first are brow position. Specifically where your brow sits in relation to the upper part of your eye socket. In guys, we want to see men who have relatively flat eyebrows that are at or slightly above the rim of your eye socket. So, the bone that sits right here.

In women, not only are we looking at the position of the eyebrows, we're also looking at the shape of the eyebrows. With women, we want to see a nice arc in the eyebrow that peaks, a little bit past your pupil. And when those brows fall, especially the outside of those eyebrows, fall over time, it can help push that eyelid skin down onto your upper eyelids and can make your eyelids look worse than they actually are.

So it's important to evaluate that. And that's something that we can simulate in the office and show you exactly what that looks like. But one of the common things that I see people in the office for when we're talking about upper lid surgeries, I say, you know, I used to get Botox and it would help, but now I can't Botox my forehead lines because it makes me, makes my eyebrows look heavy or makes me look angry.

And that is a really good clue that your eyebrows have dropped. And repositioning those. The other thing that we need to look at is the position of your eyelid itself, the upper eyelid. And there is something called eyelid ptosis, which can happen over time that there's a little muscle in your upper eyelid that can stretch out for lack of a better description.

And You don't open your eyes quite as wide. One of the tip offs to this is you feel like you look more and more tired or you have trouble keeping your eyes open as the day goes on. That's a really good clue that there is some bit of upper lid ptosis involved. So we evaluate these when we're doing our consultation to see if there are other adjunctive procedures that are going to be necessary to get you the best possible result.

Okay. For upper eyelid surgery by itself, for an upper blepharoplasty by itself, that's a procedure that we can do either in the office, under a local anesthetic, or in the operating room. What really makes those decisions largely is up to you. If you are somebody who is comfortable with an in office procedure, with having me, numb the skin of your upper eyelids and do the procedure in the office, that's a great way to go.

And we do a lot of these in the office by themselves. However, if you're nervous, or if we need to do other surgeries, we need to correct a mild degree of eyelid ptosis. We need to talk about doing a brow lift. Those are times that an upper blepharoplasty is combined with other things. And we do those in the operating room. In terms of the surgery itself, it typically takes less than an hour, and Like I said, it can be done under local anesthesia or in the operating room.

There is an incision that is hidden in the eyelid crease. So you really can't see that incision, with your eyes open. There, it's really only visible when your eyes are closed and somebody is looking directly at that scar. And even then in the majority of people, that scar becomes really, really challenging to find with time.

From a procedural standpoint, recovery from this is fairly quick if we're doing it by itself. An upper lib blepharoplasty, you have a single suture. Which, the only things you can see are the two ends, which are left in for about a week. After that, you're able to wear makeup almost immediately, and can really go about your daily activities, go back to work, things like that, your eyes will still be a little bit puffy. I tell people, it almost looks like you've been crying or something like that, but is very easily camouflaged.

Some people will ask, you know, are there, are there other alternatives to upper eyelid surgery? And in the majority of people, I would say the answer to that is no. If you've got upper lid skin excess of any significant degree, there really isn't a non surgical solution that is going to be as powerful as an upper lid blepharoplasty itself.

For very mild degrees of skin excess, so in younger patients, some of our energy devices, whether it's a laser, whether it's radiofrequency microneedling, can be useful in holding off surgery for a while and tightening that skin, but it is a very, very mild result and really only reserved for patients with very mild degrees of upper lid skin excess.

And if you have, brows that are too low, if you've got a little bit of eyelid ptosis that we're looking to fix, or in women, if your brows are flat, there really isn't a whole lot that we're going to be able to do to improve that upper lid appearance without a surgery. If upper lid blepharoplasty surgery is something that you're interested in, please reach out.

You can call my office. You can shoot me a DM on Instagram, and we can get you in for a consultation and discuss what procedure or procedures are right for you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Trillium Show. If you have any suggestions, please reach out to me on Instagram at @drjasonhall. You can comment on this if you're watching this on YouTube or send me an email, media@drjasonhall.com. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you again soon.