UCLA Study Finds Why Eyelids Sag With Age

While certainly not a health risk, one of the more evident signs of aging is sagging eyelids. But until a recent UCLA study on the subject, it wasn't particularly clear why eyelids sagged with age.

The study, published in the September issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, is the first to examine the anatomy of multiple subjects to determine what happens to the lower eyelid with age. It is also the first to measure what happens to the face with age using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

"A common treatment performed in the past and present is surgical excision of fat to treat a 'herniation of fat' — meaning that the amount of fat in the eye socket does not change but the cover that holds the fat in place, the orbital septum, is weakened or broken and fat slips out," said lead author Dr. Sean Darcy, a research associate in the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a plastic surgery resident at the University of California, Irvine. "This orbital septum weakening or herniation-of-fat theory is what most plastic surgeons have been taught.

This study is relevant because many plastic surgeons treat baggy eyelids with surgical procedures that do not remove any fat at all. Instead they do things like reposition the fat or tighten muscles or ligaments around the eye. According to the UCLA announcement, these procedures are performed "despite there being no data indicating that these structures change with age."

Source: UCLA Press Release