Why Mr R had his eyelid surgery – an eyelid surgery patient interview

Mr R. had upper and lower eyelid blepharoplasty surgery to help his vision. His eyelids were very puffy, closing up his eyes and encroaching on his field of vision so that he could not see well.
Although many patients have eyelid surgery blepharoplasty done for cosmetic reasons, some patients warrant eyelid surgery for functional medical reasons. In this blog post, we learn how the eyelid surgery blepharoplasty has helped Mr R to see better.

Jane: Hello, good afternoon Roger. Thank you very much for agreeing to do a short interview to help with the Clinica London blog posts that we do daily. We have a lot of people who regularly read our blog posts, and I am sure that they will want to know about your recent eyelid blepharoplasty surgery.
Today, it is a week after your eyelid surgery, and I am sure that other patients want to learn a little bit about your experience, so let’s go ahead and ask you some questions.
First of all, why did you want to have eyelid surgery?
Roger: Because 17 years ago I had a stroke and lost my peripheral vision on the right-hand side and recently I was also finding that my eyelids were closing over my eyes reducing even further my vision. Having spoken to you, it seemed like a good idea to have this surgery to lift the eyelids away from the eyes to increase the field of vision.
Jane: So it was very much being done for medical or functional reasons, not for aesthetic or cosmetic?
Roger: At 78, I am not really bothered about looks within reason, so yes it was totally a medical decision.
Jane: Right. Before the operation, we had to do some tests. I will just point out to people reading this blog that the name of the operation you had was blepharoplasty and ptosis surgery. Before the operation, you had to have some tests done to measure how much your eyelids interfered with the vision.
What was it like doing the tests?
Roger: You may have to jog my memory, but there was the field of vision which was to see how far, side, upwards and downwards I could see and what was the other?
Jane: I also had to check not just whether the eyelids got in the way of your field of vision, but to make sure there was nothing actually wrong with the eyes accounting for your reduced vision apart from the stroke that you had had years ago. I think you had already had cataracts done, had you not?
Roger: Cataracts had been done, which seemed to improve the vision initially, but then seemed to fall off slightly afterwards which I was told by the local optician that was not unusual, but tests were done, and I think that you found that my top eyelids were not actually moving. They seemed to be fixed and in the way of the vision.
Jane: They were very heavy and very fixed in quite a low position because you had a lot what is called descended tissue, or ptosis of the eyelids plus heavy eyelids. There were very large fatty bags protruding and pushing the lids down, meaning that you could not open them even though you used your eyebrows to try and lift the eyelids out of the way of the vision.
Most of the time you could not see very well and what with already having poor vision in the right eye this meant that you were quite handicapped by your dropped baggy eyelids. So we did tests to establish that you needed blepharoplasty and ptosis surgery for medical indications, whereas a lot of younger people may choose to have that for cosmetic. The tests confirmed your vision was affected by your eyelids, so we decided to go ahead with your surgery.
To be continued…