Think of your face as if it were divided into three sections:
Top: forehead, brow, and upper eyelid
Middle: lower eyelid and cheek
Lower: lips, chin, and neck
To rejuvenate the entire face requires forehead lifting, blepharoplasty, mid-face lifting, a neck lift, and maybe a little laser resurfacing thrown in to boot. Not many people relish the idea of going through such a marathon operation that can readily break the bank.
Treatment by blepharoplasty goes a long way towards restoring two of the three units noted above, while remaining much more modest in scope, risk, cost, and recovery time. If your eyes are bright, the impact of a slightly sagging jowl is greatly diminished.
Thus, many people elect to undergo blepharoplasty before or instead of a full facial restoration. And since the eyelids tend to age earlier than the forehead and neck, there is little reason to wait for your whole face to go to pot before deciding to fight back.
The average patient undergoes blepharoplasty only once in his or her life. If the rest of your face doesn't give out until ten or twenty years after the eyelids, the only thing accomplished by delaying treatment of eyelid changes is giving up the chance to enjoy the improvement during those two decades of relative youth and vigor.
You may be interested in the following statistics on number of procedures and age distribution provided by the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons for year 2010.
More than 209,000 people underwent cosmetic eyelid surgery.
Approximately 85% were women.
Approximately 15% were men.
For all patients over the age of 40, blepharoplasty was the single most popular cosmetic surgical procedure, surpassing liposuction, breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, and face lift.
The age distribution for those undergoing cosmetic eyelid surgery was:
Ages 19-29: 2%
Ages 30-39: 7%
Ages 40-54: 42%
Over age 55: 48%
