Betty’s facelift

Meet Betty the lovely Bassett Hound. Betty is 3 years of age and as you can see from the photograph, has an excessive, heavy skin on her forehead, causing a severe drooping of her brow. The brow droop pushed Betty’s upper eyelids downwards, she could not see well and she also experienced irritation of her conjunctiva and cornea due to her eyelashes turning inwards into her eye, a condition caused entropion.

Could something be done to help Betty? After much consideration and careful planning, a facelift (coronal rhytidectomy) was performed. Before any sedation or anaesthesia was given, measurements were made of how much skin should be removed to give Betty the desired effect of lifting the skin on her forehead, which in turn would allow the upper eyelids to sit in a more normal position, allowing Betty to see better. A 12cm long, tear drop shaped section of skin was removed from Betty’s forehead and the new brow line sutured together to give the ‘face a lift’.

Betty recovered very well from her surgery and all the skin sutures were removed 2 weeks later. Already we could see a marked improvement and additionally, Betty was no longer experiencing irritation to her eyes, with the eyelashes now out turned and not needing additional corrective entropion surgery.