Double eyelid: tape or glue will not work

Why does tape or glue not work for double eyelid fold?

Some patients who tried to use tape or glue on their eyes to have an effect of a double eyelids may have noticed that it does not work on them.  Why?  Why is it that it works on some people and it does not work on others?  Also for some people, the double eyelid fold that occurs is very temporary and it would disappear sooner than others.

For the eyelids where the double eyelid fold does not occur with tape or glue application is attributed to two factors.  One is that the patient has excess eyelid thick skin.  The other is that the patient has weak eyelid muscle function–eyelid ptosis.  When there is excess thick eyelid skin, the fold does not want to occur with weak applications such as a tape or a glue.  The thick excess skin impedes pressure to the underlying deeper layer of the eyelid for the fold to occur.  Therefore, for these patients, open incisional double eyelid surgery technique would be needed rather than suture double eyelid surgery to create a more secure double eyelid folds.

For patients with weak eyelid muscle function, the eyelid muscle does not fully lift to create a double eyelid fold even though the tape or glue has been applied on the eyelid skin.  Rather than the eyelid to lift fully, the forehead muscle takes over after the initial eyelid movement and the final eyelid elevation is done by the forehead muscles.  The double eyelid fold occurs with full excursion of the eyelid muscle.  Thus, for patients with eyelid ptosis, the important latter eyelid elevation does not occur.  Therefore, the double eyelid fold does not occur or the double eyelid fold or crease may loosen easily.  In these patients, simultaneous ptosis surgery would be needed at the time of double eyelid surgery.  By giving more eyelid muscle function, the fold can occur as the eyelid lift up with eye opening.

For those patients where they would lose the double eyelid fold with tape or the glue application throughout the day, they would also require an open incisional technique double eyelid surgery and ptosis correction to give a secure and clean double eyelid folds.