Many of my patients in Denver are interested in knowing the steps of chalazion or stye removal. The first thing to remember is that warm compresses used within the first 4 weeks of a stye, gets rid of them 85% of the time. Refer to my website denverstye.com to learn about styes and how to get rid of them. Most patients understand that a stye needs to be removed surgically but may not understand the actual steps for a stye or chalazion removal. This patient from Longmont was kind enough to let us use the photos of the procedure to educate others.

The patient has a right upper eyelid chalazion or stye. It is of the smaller side but clearly visible.

There are several steps to removing a stye from a patients eye.

Step 1: Education and Consent

Step 2: Marking the Eyelid

Step 3: Numbing the Eyelid

Step 4: Flipping the Eyelid

Step 5: Incising the Stye

Step 6: Draining the contents

Step 7: Removing Scar tissue

Step 8: Controlling Bleeding

Step 1:

The first step of stye removal is having patients understand what causes a stye, how to prevent them and how to treat them. I let them understand that they are not infectious and not caused by makeup.

Also I review the basic steps of the procedure itself so patients know what to expect

Step 2:

A Marking pen is used to mark the eyelid stye. This is important to highlight the stye because once the numbing medicine is injected it can be hard or impossible to see the stye location exactly

Step 3:

A numbing drop is placed in the eye and a numbing shot is given to numb the eyelid and skin so the procedure does not hurt. The numbing medicine is injected very slowly so it does not hurt. Also I inject around the stye and not into it to reduce pain

Step 4

An instrument is used to flip the eyelid so the backside or conjunctiva is visible. This way the incision is made on the inside of the eyelid and not on the skin.

Step 5

A small incision is made in the backside of the eyelid or conjunctiva. This exposes the contents of the inside of the stye so the material can be removed.

Step 6

The contents of the stye (mainly congealed oil) is drained and removed. Even if the contents are removed there can be scar tissue around the stye that needs to be removed.

Step 7

A small window is created to allow further oil to drain and any scar tissue around the stye is also removed

Step 8

A handheld heating device is used to stop any bleeding

Step 9

The patient hold pressure for 5 minutes

Step 10

And we are done. The appearance of the eyelid returns to normal over a week.