Craniofacial Surgery

Lateral Canthopexy Surgery

The shape of the eye is determined by the relation of the upper and lower eyelids. The space between the upper and lower lids that frames the eye itself is called the palpebral fissure. In young adults with normal facial skeletons, this opening is long and narrow. Heredity, aging, paralysis, trauma and previous surgery can all impact this youthful shape. Aging eyes have a rounder shape, due to the gravitational descent, or droop, of the lower lid, and the medial migration of the lateral canthus when the outer corner of the eye, where the eyelids meet, moves inward.

Standard blepharoplasty or eyelid surgery techniques, which remove lower eyelid skin, and often muscle, tend to drop the lower lid margin, further rounding the palpebral fissure. Newer blepharoplasty techniques, including arcus marginalis release with fat transposition, have been designed to avoid this rounding effect. Two related procedures, canthopexy and canthoplasty, are used to elevate the lower lid when it has already fallen or to prevent it from falling during a lower eyelid procedure.