Intraoperative sedation - how awake will I be for a blepharoplasty?

If you choose to be. With any cosmetic procedure of the face, there are varying degrees of anesthesia available to you.

On one end of the anesthesia spectrum, you can elect to have only local anesthesia – meaning numbing medication injected in the area to be operated on. You’re completely awake and totally lucid. This type of anesthesia is common for an upper blepharoplasty.

At the other end of the anesthesia spectrum is general anesthesia – where the patient is completely anesthetized, has a breathing tube in their mouth, has zero awareness of what is happening, and experiences no pain. This type of anesthesia is commonly used for rhinoplasty surgery.

In between local anesthesia and general anesthesia, you have varying degrees of conscious sedation – this can be achieved with oral medications, IV medications, or a combination of both. The ultimate goal for anesthesia during cosmetic surgery is to provide a patient the most comfortable experience while also providing them the safest mode of anesthesia. It’s important to ask your surgeon about which type of anesthesia they recommend for the procedure you’re undergoing and who will be administering the anesthesia medications.

At FACE Leawood, we have a board-certified Anesthesiologist that assists with all procedures in which the patient requests sedation.