Eyelid Drooping

WHEN TO SEE YOUR DOCTOR

* Your upper lid dips into your line of vision or your lower lid pulls away from your eye.

What Your Symptom Is Telling You

Drooping upper eyelids, known as ptosis, are caused when the eyelid's "lifting" muscles begin to sag. It's a condition you can be born with, or it can develop from aging, after cataract surgery or from an injury. Other conditions that can cause drooping eyelids include diabetes, a tumor or Bell's palsy—a viral infection that causes temporary facial paralysis. One or both lids may droop down far enough to curtain your line of sight.

When lower lids become lax from normal aging, the muscles pull away from the lids, so the lids turn out. This causes the lubricating tears that are normally spread by blinking to instead spill down your cheeks. The result: Your eyes become dry and vulnerable to light and wind.

Symptom Relief

Tipping your head back or raising your eyebrows to see out from under droopy lids takes great effort. Here are some far more effective lid-lifting measures.

Tape your eyes open. A piece of see-through, hypo-allergenic bandage tape (available at pharmacies) can help pull the drooping eyelid skin slightly taut and lift it out of your line of vision. First, place your index finger at the outside corner of your upper eyelid and gently push the sagging skin up a bit toward your eyebrow. Use 1/4 inch of tape to hold the eyelid skin in place. Make sure you've allowed room for eyelid movement. "The trick is to keep the tape loose enough so you can still blink and lubricate your eyes," says Howard Eggers, M.D., associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.

Wear custom-made glasses. Your optometrist or optician can solder a padded wire on the inside frames of your eyeglasses to hold up a fold of skin, says Dr. Eggers. It's flexible enough to move when you blink, he adds.

Try a lid tuck. As a last resort, your doctor can surgically shorten the lid-lifting muscles, says Douglas Fredrick, M.D., clinical instructor of ophthalmology at the University of California in San Francisco. You may be temporarily unable to fully close your eye after surgery, however. If so, keep your eyes moist—with artificial tears during the day and ointments while sleeping—until your lids can close, says Dr. Fredrick.