The eyes, as the saying goes, are the windows to your soul. Not only do they show your emotions, unfortunately they can also show your age more than any other part of the face. Eyelid surgery, or blepharoplasty to use the medical name, removes some of the excess skin and tissue around the area to give you a fresher, more youthful look. There are several cosmetic surgery treatments that can make your eyes look more youthful.

Why have eyelid surgery?

For most women, the desire to look younger is the only reason they need to consider eyelid surgery. Whatever your own personal motivations may be, the decision to go ahead with this procedure needs careful thought. We would strongly encourage you to chat through any questions you might have with one of our consultant surgeons or a member of our team of friendly advisors before you commit to treatment. These advisors are here to help answer any questions you have, without applying any kind of sales pressure, so that you can be 100% confident with your decision if you do eventually proceed with surgery.

Your eyelid surgery operation

Your consultant surgeon will make a small cut in the natural folds of the eyelid, remove the excess skin and tissue before using very fine stitching to close the cut again. The stitching is designed to minimise scarring, although you should expect to see a hint of lines in the mirror before they fade with time. This operation can be performed under local anaesthetic although, if you’re a little squeamish, you may decide with your consultant surgeon that a general anaesthetic would suit you better.

Recovery

You will usually only need to stay in hospital for one night but, to give yourself time to recover fully, you should arrange to take the following week off work and you should avoid strenuous activity and sport for at least six weeks. You can expect some tenderness and minor swelling around the eyes although this will soon pass and any discomfort can be eased with painkillers.

Cost

There’s nothing worse than unexpected charges that you don’t find out about until after the event, and that’s why we make sure you know the full cost of your surgery before you make the decision to proceed. Our inclusive packages cover all the hospital charges for your stay, your consultant’s fees for the operation and one-follow-up consultation.

Why choose BMI Ross Hall hospital?

We provide free diagnostic consultations, including scans and tests

We deliver consultant-led surgery, offering six months free aftercare

Our dedicated ophthalmic team provides treatment in a private hospital

We also offer Flexible Finance

The BMI card allows you to spread the cost of treatment interest free (0% APR Representative).

The post Is eyelid surgery right for you? appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Hearing loss affects more than 500 million people worldwide and surgery is one of the ways the problem can be addressed. However, operating on the complex structure of the ear is a challenge for ENT surgeons who have to perform delicate procedures using large, cumbersome microscopes which Tympany Medical co-founder Dr Liz McGloughlin says are far from ideal.

In 2016 McGloughlin teamed up with designer and company co-founder Rory O’Callaghan to develop a miniature device that will replace the scopes used by surgeons for the last half century. Tympany’s solution will revolutionise how ENT surgeons operate and will also allow many more procedures to be carried out in outpatient settings.  

“We have developed the world’s first specialised endoscope for ear surgery that gives surgeons a wide-angle view of the ear but still allows them to operate without changing their well-established surgical techniques,” McGloughlin says. “Our product is called Otovu and it is a compact visualisation device that leverages cutting-edge optic and sensor technologies.

“Pathology of the ear often necessitates surgery to repair the eardrum or remove benign tumours which affect conductive or bony hearing and our device allows surgeons to operate in a faster and more minimally invasive manner,” explains McGloughlin who studied medicine at UCD and trained in anaesthesia and critical care before joining the BioInnovate programme at NUI Galway in 2016. BioInnovate brings medical practitioners, engineers and designers together to find solutions to unmet clinical needs.

“As an industrial designer who also has a masters in medical-device design, Rory could see the ergonomic challenges instantly and when we showed our initial concept to Prof Colin Driscoll, chair of the department of otorhinolaryngology – head and neck surgery – at the Mayo Clinic, he was really excited and wondered why surgeons were not already operating this way,” McGloughlin says.

Tailor our device’

“By working side by side with surgeons in Ireland, Europe and the Mayo Clinic in the US, and with the input of ENT professor Ivan Keogh, also of NUI Galway, we have been able to tailor our device to meet surgeons’ needs exactly – unlike existing microscopes and endoscopes. The user interface was critical for us and it was also a huge challenge to miniaturise the components. Traditionally, surgical solutions for other specialisms were shoehorned into use for ENT procedures. With Otovu ENT gets its own dedicated device. These are very skilled surgeons and our device will allow them to do so much more,” McGloughlin says.

Tympany Medical will be spun out from NUIG later this year and as of now the business employs four people. It has been supported by Enterprise Ireland with an investment of €426,000 under its commercialisation fund. In 2018, the company won €50,000 in the EU-backed EIT Health Headstart competition for early-stage health service and product ideas. It is now seeking to raise in excess of €1.5 million to secure regulatory approval for the product in the US and Europe.

‘Next milestone’

“As with all medtech products, there is a regulatory process so the next milestone is to complete that successfully,” says McGloughlin who may have medtech in her blood as her father is a biomedical engineer. “We are hoping to make or at least assemble the device in Ireland and a key selling point with healthcare systems worldwide is that, because our device will allow more surgeries to be done in a minimally invasive way, it will make absolute sense for them to go with it from an economic point of view.”

McGloughlin didn’t go into BioInnovate expecting to start a business. Rather she had seen it more as an opportunity to shed new light on her existing clinical practice. But a meeting of minds with Rory O’Callaghan and the realisation that their pooled backgrounds represented a strong skillset encouraged them to develop out their idea, which is expected to have its commercial launch in 2022.

The post New endoscope brings ear surgery into 21st century appeared first on MyMedicPlus.