As an eyelift specialist in Denver, Colorado one of the most common procedures that I perform are cosmetic eyelifts or blepharoplasty. When searching for someone to perform eyelift surgery, it is critical to find the right specialist. Also, it is important to alert your surgeon of any other treatments such as Botox or Filler that you may have on board that can affect the surgery. I recently saw a patient from Edwards, Colorado who asked me why it is important that she recently had botox when I was evaluating her for an eyelid lift. Here are three ways that Botox can impact a blepharoplasty and give great examples of why it is critical to inform your doctor when you have had botox and how recent.
Causing a drooping eyelid
One of the risks of botox is to cause a drooping eyelid or ptosis. If you have had botox in the forehead or eye area, it could artificially lower the height of the eyelid. Though it would a subtle change, it would be someone that could affect the judgement of your surgeon. Additionally sometimes we perform additional procedure to raise the eyelid during a blepharoplasty. If one has had botox and the eyelid is artificially low, that would be a critical mistake as the eyelid would return to the normal position once the botox wore off.
Paralyzing the brow
By reducing the wrinkles of the forehead, botox has a side effect of paralyzing the eyebrows. The horizontal lines in the forehead are caused by raising of the eyebrows. Botox works by paralyzing that muscle (frontalis) that raises the eyebrow. By paralyzing the eyebrow however, the upper eyelid skin could be artificially increased. Raising the eyebrow stretches that skin of the upper eyelid so when the eyebrow cannot raise as well, that skin of the upper eyelid is more pronounced. Again, an important topic to discuss with your eyelid surgeon.
Interefering with eyelid closure
Botox in the crow’s feet paralyzes the muscles used to close the eye. Those muscles cause the creases on the side of the eyes commonly referred to as crow’s feet. When a blepharoplasty is performed in my Denver practice, eyelid closure could be a temporary or more long term problem. It is difficult to asses the eyelid closure of a patient if Botox is administered and is interfering with how the eyelids close.
In summary, having botox is great. It softens many wrinkles on the face. That being said, if one is having a blepharoplasty, it is critical to let your eyelid specialist know that this is something that is in your system so they can properly assess you along with perform the eyelid surgery well.