Blepharoplasty: Who is a candidate?Contoura Facial Plastic Surgery

TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Garcia from Contoura Facial Plastic Surgery. I wanted to answer a question today of how does one know if they need a blepharoplasty? A couple issues with this. The number one thing that I tell my patients all the time is there's no time in your life where you need a blepharoplasty. This is like any other facial aesthetic surgery that we do. It's when you think that you no longer want to continue to look at some issue of your face in the mirror every day, right? What drives patients into our offices? They're tired of perseverating over something. Things that you might see of your upper eyelids, for instance, now that we're on this particular subject. You might notice excess hooding of skin over your upper eyelids. You might notice that your vision is changing because you're having some lateral hooding that's obstructing the outer peripheral vision.

You might notice that you're continually having to raise your eyebrows, and you might notice that due to you continually having to raise your eyebrows, in the latter parts of the day, you might find that you have headaches or a little bit more strain in between your eyes developing those elevens or those horizontal lines of the forehead. That to me from an anatomical standpoint is one, you should consider it. Now, from an aesthetic standpoint, it's when it bothers you, right? It's when you finally look in the mirror, you say, "I can't take it anymore." That's the time to come in and see us. With regards to the lower eyelids, the things that you'll notice is as the eye changes, it drops a bit, pushing fat pockets forward, and that's what causes the bags under the eyes. Ultimately, due to the continued loss of collagen that we begin to see after the age of 30, you'll see that that you start developing fine lines and wrinkles underneath the eyes as well.

The last thing you might notice around your lower eyelids is you might notice kind of shadowing and hollowing underneath, as we know that we have a natural fat loss that occurs in the face within the perimenopausal years of life, so from the early 40s to the 60s. You'll start noticing a deflation of the face due to fat loss and one of the first areas that you see it is around the eyes, so that might accentuate those upper fat pockets a little bit more, make you look a little bit more tired, sunken and a little bit more of a sullen appearance. That's when I recommend patients to at least have an idea of what's entailed in doing it. The procedure's not very complicated, and you'll find that your recovery is within a week, but it is a very gratifying procedure. We perform anywhere from seven to eight of these a week. Maybe more now, I don't know.

But that's a very, very common procedure for us to do and it's a very gratifying procedure. Our patients do see immediate results and they see their vision is improved. They can now see the color back in their eyes because now all of a sudden there's more light getting into their eyes, so it is a very gratifying procedure. Anyway, having said that, we do have a website, as you're on it already, that has a tremendous amount of information onto the specifics of a blepharoplasty, the do's and don'ts after surgery, who is a great candidate, who is not, and how to come in and schedule a consultation with us if you so desire. Hope everything's well, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Bye-bye.