insideKENT Magazine Issue 27 - June 2014 | Page 85

HEALTH+WELLNESS

The Best Cosmetic
Surgical Procedure?
WITH JOHN DAVISON

I was recently asked which cosmetic surgical procedure I
thought was the best. Not much hestitation – I’d say an
upper eyelid blepharoplasty (eye lift). I have often thought
that if Which Magazine looked at the most common surgical
operation, they’d conclude an upper eyelift would be the
‘best buy’. They would look at a number of features including
cosmetic improvement, cost, recovery time, any long-term
consequence and of course the risks of complications.

Upper eyelid skin excess and laxity is one of the
earlier signs of facial aging and is certainly one
of the features which people seem to struggle
with. However, this is not only an operation for
age-related changes. There are many younger
people who have a heaviness of the skin of their
upper eyelids. This can often be an inherited
feature. Some patients I see do not like this
appearance, or worry about how this will worsen
with age.
When I meet a new patient, they are often a little
anxious about seeing me; they are not being
flippant, they have a genuine concern. After we
have a chat and after I have done an examination,
I talk about the operation, and this discussion is
in three sections. The initial part of our talk is
about the actual operation itself – what it involves,
and what I will actually do. I talk about what we
achieve, the anaesthetic and what the
consequences are in terms of scars, symmetry
and improvement.
I then discuss the recovery – whether there is a
hospital stay, what they will be able to do and
not do early after