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Blepharoplasty (Eyelid Surgery)
  - Introduction

Eyelid surgery gives your eyes a fresher, younger more relaxed look, by removing excess skin and bags.

Your most important feature
Your eyes are your most important facial feature. They are what people notice first when they meet you and the feature they focus on most. The appearance of our eyes plays a large role in how young, attractive and vital we appear.

• Heredity is an important factor, especially for young or middle aged people noticing changes usually associated with more advanced aging.
• Facial structure can play a role as well. Even slightly under-developed malar and upper jaw bones provide insufficient support to the lower lids. This can lead to lower lid bags and low position of the lid even in younger patients.
• Sunlight and ultraviolet rays damage the area around the eye through their direct effect on the skin and by causing us to squint, which builds up muscle thickness below the eyelashes.
• Finally, normal aging causes stretching of the eyelid skin and leads to excess folds, wrinkles, and sagging of the fat around the eye which appears as bulges in both the upper and lower lids.

By removing excess skin and bags, eyelid surgery (Blepharoplasty) can improve many of these problems. It cannot, however, totally eradicate all eyelid creases. Doing so would create excess tension on the eyelids and result in an overcorrection. Nor can surgery remove laugh lines at the sides of the eyes or malar bags (bulges high on the cheek bones).

Blepharoplasty has evolved significantly in the last 15 years, and mistakes of the past should stay where they belong i.e. in the past.

• In the upper eyelid, attempts to clear very heavy fatty tissue excess has been shown to produce a hollow appearance (doll's eyes), that can make the patient look more tired and is objectionable to most women and men.
• In the lower eyelids, a better understanding of the relationship between the cheek, the rim of the orbit and the eyelid bags, has led surgeons to understand that a youthful appearance does not come from purely removing the bags, but rather from a more complex attempt to reduce volume as well as redrape the tissues over the bony edge. The aim is to restore a smoother contour between the lower eyelid than the cheek, reducing as much as possible the appearance of the circles under the eyes. This also allows us to avoid a hollow appearance of the lower eyelids.