Put your sleepy eye worries aside with blepharoptosis surgery!

Have you ever heard of your friends pointing out your sleepy-looking impression even though you’re not tired at all? It’s hard to fight back these stressful comments but you may wonder why you’re giving such impression to others. Drooped eyelids which lead to tired-looking and dull impression may have to do with ‘blepharoptosis.’ Such symptom usually appears on just one side or both eyes. You may be born with this symptom but sometimes it naturally appears later on during your life. So let’s take a closer look!

What is ‘blepharoptosis’?

Blepharoptosis or ptosis refers to conditions where upper or bottom eyelids become drooped. When you have drooped upper eyelids, it’s hard to open your eyes widely. Surgical operation is required to fix this. When upper eyelids cover at least 1-2mm of your iris, your condition is considered normal. If they cover more than that, there’s a higher chance of you having blepharoptosis. In this case, it would be hard for you to clearly open your eyes for a long time and it would feel more comfortable to close your eyes. 

Is it okay to leave this symptom as it is?

Normally, it would be okay to leave blepharoptosis but there may be a possibility of losing vision when conditions of both eyes are different. And people suffering from blepharoptosis usually strain their forehead to open eyes because their upper-eyelid muscle is too weak to move. In this case, you can get wrinkles on your forehead and may eventually have asymmetric look. If your condition is severe enough to cover front sight, you may get a habit of lifting your chin up. In order to reduce the stress received when people point out flaws about your physical feature, there are ways to improve tired-looking impression that you can consider.

So is surgical operation my only solution?

If your condition is mild, you may be able to get clear eye-lines through a bit of muscle exercise. Try the following tips and see if they work! Grab your forehead with your palms. You’re going to use your forehead to have a habit of opening your eyes. Pull your chin out and practice opening your eyes and looking up. This would train your muscle when opening eyes. But remember, this may only work when you have only minor symptoms.

How does ‘blepharoptosis surgery’ work?

Surgical operation may vary depending on different symptoms and their severity but most common measures include ‘eyelid lifting myectomy’ and ‘venter frontalis surgery.’ These two operations focus on shortening and fixing muscles that naturally result in creating double eyelids. So some people go through blepharoptosis in order to have bigger looking eyes. But if you don’t want double eyelids, experts suggest it’s unnecessary to get muscle myectomy. Even though you have a particular surgical measure that you wish to go through, it’s always important to take the one that fits your own skin condition, thickness of muscles, shapes of eyelids and degree of severity by sufficiently consulting with experts.

Incision may be required if you need to cover a wide range of areas with eyelid surgery. But if only a minimum part of areas need to be treated, measures involving non-incision can be your option. Although this may lead to a possibility of re-operation, many prefer non-incision operation due to fast recovery and natural eye-line.

The operation proceeds in a same order as double-eyelid surgery. After giving an outline of how the area is going to treated, the operation began as patients are put into both general and local anesthesia. Blepharoptosis surgery requires repeatedly opening patients’ eyes as surgeons need to monitor muscle movements. So when patients sufficiently don’t move or open eyes unclearly, the result may turn out asymmetric. 

If you’re curious about the changes after blepharoptosis surgery, pay close attention! 

Q. Is there a possibility of my eyes getting smaller after the surgery?

A. Your eyes may look small at first due to swelling but your actual and final outcome would come out 7 days after. And this eye-size does not normally change except for rare occasions.

Q. Puffy eyes from the operation still bother me. When would this get better?

A. The operation requires fixing muscles so it naturally leads to more swelling around eyes than regular double-eyelid surgery. And your eyes may look even puffier because you start opening your eyes with just eye-movement whereas you used your eyebrows to open eyes before the operation. But this is just a temporary symptom caused by swollen muscles not by remaining fats around eyes. So the symptom would naturally go away as swelling goes down.

Q. Does the operation make you sleep with eyes open?

A. Normally, the surgery does not make you sleep with your eyes open but you may sleep with your eyes not being ‘fully’ closed in some of complex operation cases. But this naturally goes away within two weeks and it’s recommended to apply eye-ointment and sleep with an eye patch during the recovery period.

Q. When is the suitable time to get additional touches after the first operation?

A. There may a couple of cases where you may need additional operations depending on habits of opening eyes or dry eye conditions that lead to changes in eye size or shape. So in this case, you can always get additional treatments 7-14 days after the first operation. 

Say good-bye to your sleepy, tired and dull looking eyes! It’s always a difficult decision to get a surgery as your solution. We recommend a thorough consultation at a professional and experienced hospital in order to stay away from side effects and complications(bleeding, infection, scars and etc.).