Who is a good candidate for eyelid surgery?

Eyelid surgery works best for people whose eyes are healthy in general. To learn who may not be great candidates for eyelid surgery, featuring cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon Robert Grant, MD, Mac, FACS.

Transcript

00:00

A good candidate for eyelid surgery is someone who has good overall eye health, in other words, no problems with glaucoma

00:07

or, more importantly, no problems with what's known as "dry eye syndrome." Dry eye syndrome is the feeling of actually

00:14

having a chronic irritation of the surface of the eye even though there's no foreign body, dust,

00:20

or eyelash in the eye. Interestingly, we're seeing this more and more as a result of patients who've had corneal refractive surgery,

00:29

commonly known as Lasix. In this operation, which sculpts the cornea in order

00:35

to avoid the need for eyeglasses, the fact that the cornea has been manipulated

00:42

changes the body's ability to make tears over the eye. So you should make sure that, when you're having a consultation, you share with your doctor

00:50

whether you've had a previous operation on the eye so that you didn't have to wear glasses.

00:56

The best patients are those, of course, who don't wait until the problem is at an extreme because extreme makeovers

01:03

work great for houses, but they don't really work great for people's appearance. So you want to have enough of a problem

01:10

that the minimally invasive techniques with laser or light-based treatments won't work, but that you're not waiting so long that you're carrying

01:18

around huge baggages of excess skin and fat under the eyes that will be so dramatically

01:25

different in your post-op appearance that you'll be walking around having the stigmata of an operation