Hey guys,
Having surgery to remove a stye or a chalazion can be a daunting prospect, so in this post I want to tell you a little about what you can expect to happen if your doctor recommends surgery to get rid of a lump on your eyelid.
Surgery is often the last resort in stye treatment – styes will usually disappear on their own within a week or two and you can reduce the healing time to between one and two days by using the home treatments I talk about here. The first time you visit your doctor, they will probably recommend these same treatments.
If your stye doesn’t respond to these treatments, your doctor will probably prescribe an antibiotic cream for you to use and if this doesn’t work they will refer you to an ophthalmologist for surgery.
For an ophthalmologist, the procedure to remove a stye or chalazion is a routine operation.
The first thing they will do is inject your eyelid with a local anaesthetic, which will numb the tissue around the stye. This is the only part of the procedure which will cause you pain or discomfort – and the pain of the needle going in is not particularly bad for someone with a normal pain threshold. It can be likened to the pain you feel when your dentist injects your gums with anaesthetic.
Once you have no feeling in your eyelid, your ophthalmologist will put a small clamp on your eyelid, which will hold it in the required position whilst they remove your stye or chalazion. Then they will make an incision in your eyelid and drain all the pus, blood and other fluids from the stye. Because of the anaesthetic, you will not feel a thing during this part of the procedure.
If you have an internal stye, the incision will be made on the inside of the eyelid and if you have an external stye the incision will be made on the exterior (more info about internal and external styes here).
After the stye has been removed and the fluids mopped up, your ophthalmologist may close the wound with a suture (small and unnoticeable stitches). They will then affix a temporary bandage/eye-patch to your eye, which you will need to wear for a number of hours to soak up any additional fluids post-operation.
Sometimes you may be asked to wait a while (perhaps half an hour) after the operation to ensure you are okay before leaving. Other times, the doctor will let you leave immediately. You can then go about your daily routine as usual (albeit with one eye covered by a patch).
The stye or chalazion that has been cut from your eyelid will usually be sent to the lab for a routine check that there is no evidence of cancerous tissue.
Over the next few days (and after you have removed the patch) you may notice bruising around your eye. This is normal and will disappear over time as the tissue around your eye heals. You may also experience some discomfort around your eye due to the bruising but again this will disappear over time.
Over the long term, stye surgery leaves hardly any visible scarring and there will be no noticeable evidence that you ever had it.
The video below shows an example of surgery to remove a chalazion (WARNING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH):
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