A low position of the eyebrows can be physical makeup or the consequence of ageing. The volume of the facial bones decreases with age. This includes the frontal or forehead bones, which also become a bit flatter over time. Because of the decreased support the soft tissues, including the eyebrows, tend to drop a bit. Horizontal forehead wrinkles develop because the forehead muscles have to work harder and harder to raise the eyebrows.
At times, the eyebrows drop just vertically. Sometimes, the lateral part of the eyebrows slides more in an inferomedial direction (down and towards the vertical midline of the face). The direction of the correction must be adapted to this. Younger patients and persons who need only a minor correction usually choose a treatment with resorbable threads. Depending on the kind of threads used, most of the material has disappeared after six months to two years. Permanent sutures have a more durable effect, but they may provoke headaches in persons prone to this side effect.
Some lifting threads are introduced with a cannula (a needle with a rounded, closed tip). No incisions are made. The skin is only punctured under local anaesthesia.
The surgical eyebrow suture lift can be performed under local anaesthesia as well. It requires a two cm incision in the hair-bearing skin of the temples and two stab incisions of only two millimetres in the brows.
Non-resorbable sutures are guided from the temples to the eyebrows and back. The sutures are firmly attached to connective tissue in the temples.
A lift of the lateral aspect of the eyebrows by a few millimetres is frequently enough to open the eyes without making them look unnatural. This technique is less appropriate when the entire eyebrow has to be raised. In such case, direct skin excision can be considered.
Although this operation is often performed to treat functional operations, it is not on the list of medical procedures covered by public Belgian healthcare.
This eyebrow lift is usually combined with an upper eyelid correction (blepharoplasty) in the same session.
