Can I Combine Blepharoplasty with a Brow Lift?

When you’re young, you don’t think much about gravity. However, as you age, you see gravity’s effect in the droop of your eyelids, eyebrows, and forehead, giving you a constant tired or angry expression that doesn’t accurately reflect who you are. Fortunately, a brow lift can help you look younger and feel refreshed.

Dr. Dustin Heringer of Arizona Ocular & Facial Plastic Surgery, with offices in Scottsdale and Peoria, Arizona, uses a brow lift to reverse some of the more visible signs of aging. This surgical procedure involves raising the soft tissue around your brows and smoothing out wrinkled skin on your forehead and the area around your eyes.

Brow lifts are often performed as a stand-alone procedure. However, as long as they’re rejuvenating part of their face, many patients want to add on other procedures, such as a blepharoplasty (eyelid lift), to restore the entire upper portion. Can you combine the two?

According to Dr. Heringer — no problem.

The endoscopic brow lift

Dr. Heringer uses this technique most frequently, and it’s become the go-to choice for brow lift surgery in general for two reasons: it’s less invasive than the other two techniques and delivers good results. 

Dr. Heringer makes several minute incisions (each about ¾” long) just behind your hairline to minimize scar visibility. Then, using a miniature camera (endoscope) inserted just under the skin and extremely thin instruments, he repositions the muscles and lifts the underlying forehead tissue while removing excess fat and skin.

Finally, the doctor closes the incisions with a few sutures or staples, generally removed about one-week post-surgery. The result is a smooth, taut forehead.

Visualizing blepharoplasty

Eyelid drooping, otherwise known as ptosis, can result from aging. Your body’s production of collagen and elastin, two proteins that strengthen your skin and give it resilience, naturally starts to decrease around age 25.

Without the proteins’ support, you develop fine lines and wrinkles on your face, including the skin on your eyelids. Together with the constant downward pull of gravity, the now-loosened skin begins to droop so that the upper eyelid hangs over the eyelashes, which may obstruct your vision.

The skin on the lower eyelids also wrinkles, sags, and bulges, creating tired-looking bags.

Add to this that you have stores of fat to cushion your eyeball from the skull bones, and it’s held in place by a thin membrane that also weakens with age. This causes the fat to shift forward into the lids, making them puff up.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that, in 2018, more than 200,000 people chose blepharoplasty to lift their eyelids. That made it one of the top five cosmetic surgical procedures.

Not all blepharoplasties are cosmetic. They can also be performed for medical reasons, but only on the upper lid to restore occluded vision. In either case, Dr. Heringer makes a small cut in the upper lid’s crease so the scar won’t be visible. Next, he removes any excess skin, muscle, and fat and may move some tissues around the eye for aesthetic reasons.

If you’re having blepharoplasty on your lower lid, Dr. Heringer makes the incision along the lower lash line, which also hides the scar.

If you’re interested in rejuvenating the upper third of your face, combining blepharoplasty with a brow lift can provide more complete results. To learn more, or to schedule a consultation with Dr. Heringer, contact Arizona Ocular & Facial Plastic Surgery by calling our nearest office.