Your board-certified plastic surgeon should go over all of the risks involved in blepharoplasty during your pre-operative examination. This type of eye surgery is the most common type of cosmetic surgery performed and the low incidence of complications make it one of the more attractive alternatives.

Risks and side effects rarely occur and can be unpleasant. Most of these risks are readily treatable, however. You should be aware of signs that some of them are developing, because many of them occur after you go home. These include the risk of infection, which occurs when incisions are made in your skin. Excessive bleeding can occur if your wounds do not heal immediately, especially if your stitching comes undone due to some amount of stress or injury to your eyes following surgery.

Any incision runs the risk of having a wound separation happen during recovery. This happens when the skin separates where it had been surgically joined. Possible causes can include bleeding, swelling, nicotine use, movement or infection. You also do not want to prematurely remove your sutures as this can result in wound separation as well. Suture cysts may also develop along the separating line of your wound. These cysts are generally easy to extract. Use of anesthesia carries with it some amount of adverse effects as well.

Other risks of blepharoplasty include cosmetic risks involving the way your eyes turn out to look. Generally, unrealistic expectations can lead a patient to have doubts about the outcome of their surgery. Careful and frank discussion with your surgeon will usually alleviate this problem.

Other cosmetic problems include asymmetry, wherein the eyes may not match correctly in size or shape. Insufficient or excessive skin removal can result in difficulties involving eye closure or blinking. Insufficient or excessive fat removal can result in blemishes, or other cosmetic unattractiveness.

Scarring can occur on the eyelids or around them, even inside the eyelids, and this may lead to problems with eye movement and vision. A drooping eyelid may occur as well, leading to cosmetic issues.

Double vision and loss of vision are visual related side effects that may occur with blepharoplasty, but are very uncommon and, if they do occur, are usually temporary. Complete and total vision loss is a very rare, but occurring, risk of eye surgery and is usually caused by issues arising from bleeding.

Make sure that your board certified surgeon covers all of the risks, especially those that are most likely to occur with your personal surgery. Follow through on pre and postoperative care and any problems or risks will be severely minimized.