What Happens After Cosmetic Eyelid Surgery?


Cosmetic Surgery Enquiry

After surgery, your eyes will be quite swollen and painful for the following few days. There are a number of things that will help to reduce the pain and protect your eyes from unwanted infections. You will usually be told to come back the next day to check that there are no problems with healing and then further checkups will be needed to check your progress. Painkillers will be given or you can use over the counter painkillers such as Paracetamol to help ease the pain for the first few days.

Firstly, you can help reduce the swelling and bruising by putting cold compresses onto the eyes for 20 minutes every hour. This will also help relieve pain but you must not put the ice directly onto the skin so wrap it up to avoid causing any damage. The swelling should go down after around ten days maybe earlier. You also need to keep your head held up so sleep on propped up pillows and refrain from bending over in order to reduce the swelling.

Your incisions will have stitches in and antibiotic ointment needs to be applied to help prevent infection. After about 3-5 days, the stitches will need to be taken out and afterwards the area may need steri- strips in order to stop the wound from reopening.

You must be gentle with the area as otherwise you run the risk of reopening the wound. Bathe the wounds with clean water and when not washing make sure that they are thoroughly dry. Do not towel dry the area or rub the area in any way.

There are a number of day-to-day things that you will be unable to do. For one, you will not be able to drive until your eyes are completely fine and you are not in any pain. You should avoid wearing any form of makeup as this could aggravate the area. Contact lenses should also be avoided for 1-2 weeks. Any form of contact sport should be left well alone for at least three weeks.

Usually most patient's lives return to their usual daily routine after 10 days of recovery. It is important that you get enough rest to ensure that the healing process will be successful. Full healing can vary between individuals and can take as long as nine months to see the full effect.

Further Articles