What Kinds of Anesthesia are Available for your Blepharoplasty?

Dr. Roberto Garcia | 06/03/2021

As we age, our eyelids along with the rest of our skin begin to lose elasticity. This natural aging process can cause droopy eyelids and cause more harm than just to your aesthetic.

Drooping eyelids can also affect your vision. Not being able to control your eyelids or see properly can be more than a minor inconvenience. It can have a terribly debilitating effect on your life.

This condition isn't only caused by age.

Some certain illnesses and conditions can affect the eyelids such as a stroke or brain tumor. If you are dealing with eyelids that are sagging or drooping more than you want, you may be considering a blepharoplasty which is also known as an eyelid lift.

Inevitably this raises the question of this article - what anesthesia is available?

There are several options available ranging from local anesthetic to full sedation. To help understand which anesthetic you will be most comfortable with, let's have a look at what the procedure entails.

The surgery is performed by identifying the creases in the upper eyelid and creating a tiny incision that is hidden in the natural crease. The surgeon then gets rid of the excess skin while taking care to ensure that the eyelid will still function naturally as it should.

In some instances, a small part of the muscle which handles the closing of the eyelid must also be removed, and fat may be removed from the upper eyelids as well. Once complete the incision is sutured. The whole thing typically only takes about 30 minutes.

What Kinds of Sedation are Available at Contoura in Jacksonville, FL?

There are 3 options available to patients at Contoura which we will break down for you now. Local anesthesia is always used to numb the nerve that is responsible for pain sensations in the eyelid area. This can be in combination with either conscious or unconscious sedation, or on its own.

Let's have a closer look at each of the options and the pros and cons associated with each.

Local Anesthesia

As we just mentioned, this is the practice of freezing the nerve in the area that is to be worked on. It is essentially the same as going to the dentist – there is a shot, and numbness prevails for the next few hours or more. This is typically favored by practitioners either with or without conscious anesthetic, for a few reasons.

Using a local anesthetic in lieu of even conscious or unconscious sedation is a far less invasive technique to the patient's body. While using sedation is a safe form of anesthesia, it is more involved and costly to patients and also means that the procedure will take longer.

Local anesthetics are administered with a syringe to ensure the proper placement – don't worry it's only a little pinch. This is a better option for those who can stomach being awake through the procedure.

Conscious Sedation

This is a method of sedation that relaxes the patient throughout the procedure. Used in tandem with a local anesthetic, this is ultimately a more cost-effective method than unconscious sedation.

The anesthetic is usually administered through an IV, but can also be given orally. The patient is usually still awake during the procedure, but they are thoroughly relaxed. This is about as much anesthesia as is generally required.

As the patient is so relaxed and can feel nothing due to the local anesthesia, it is a very comfortable way to have this procedure done – even if you are among the more squeamish of patients.

Many patients do not even require this form of sedation and opt only for the local anesthesia, although there is a third option if there is just no way you could stand to be awake through the procedure.

General Anesthesia

Using general anesthesia is a surefire way to ensure that you feel nothing, you see nothing and you know nothing of the entire procedure. While this has its appeal to many patients who may be having severe anxiety around having the procedure, it does increase cost, risk and, recovery time.

While performing general anesthesia is done to the highest standards of safety just like all procedures at Contoura, choosing to go with general sedation is a choice that should be made only after carefully weighing the risks and benefits with your practitioner.