The choice of operating facility is up to your doctor and up to you. While blepharoplasty is a delicate operation, it is not particularly invasive to your body as a whole or overly dangerous to your state of general well-being.
A well-equipped office operating room should work as well as (and in some cases, better than) a general hospital surgery suite primarily equipped to perform general surgery operations. Blood pressure and pulse can be monitored throughout a blepharoplasty whether in an office setting or at a hospital.
If your doctor maintains an office operating room equipped to perform eyelid surgery, this may be your best bet. The doctor may feel more comfortable working on his or her own home turf and knowing that the facility is equipped with exactly the right instruments and supplies.
From a patient's point of view, it's hard for most hospitals to compete with the comfort and level of personal attention doled out in most office operating rooms. Office operating rooms are staffed by people you may have already met during your consultation. Having already visited your doctor's office, you can more readily imagine yourself as a patient undergoing your procedure. By decreasing the "unknown", the overall experience is generally made more positive.
Blepharoplasty can be performed quite successfully under local anesthesia with moderate oral sedation and analgesia. Some doctors, however, may prefer general inhalation anesthesia or deep intravenous twilight sleep. In such cases where the risk of drug side-effects is higher and the recovery from anesthesia will take longer, you may wish to give consideration to the added security of a large hospital or out-patient surgicenter.
