Lower eyelid blepharoplasty: An overview

Abstract

Of the two common techniques of lower blepharoplasty, the transconjunctival approach is limited to young patients with prominent herniation of lower fat pad without skin excess and the transcutaneous approach to patients requiring skin excision. However, the current trends not only highlight the traditional sculpting of the three orbital fat pads in lower lid blepharoplasty but also additional relocation of the intraorbital fats for correcting the inferior orbital hollowing. The purpose of this review is to analyze the published literature on common types, techniques, indications, and outcomes of the multiple surgical variants of lower lid blepharoplasty often aimed at treating the redundant skin, steatoblepharon, tear trough deformity, lid laxity, and dermatochalasis, thereby to correct the negative vector and inferior orbital hollowing along with effacement of the lid cheek junction. An extensive survey of peer-reviewed literature published in English in electronic databases, as well as bibliographies from cited articles, was conducted. Databases such as MEDLINE PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Embase were scanned using relevant medical subject heading (MeSH) terms. Clinical studies with a minimum of five study cases were included. Level III evidence, case reports, letters, editorials, and case series with fewer than five eyes were excluded. This article provides a concise overview of available literature and as such no meta-analysis was done due to the narrowed scope of the involved studies and the variety in surgical approaches and techniques of lower lid blepharoplasty.