Epiblepharon is a fold of skin on the eyelid that can cause eye disease, more common in people of Asian or Hispanic ancestry. It can cause eyelashes to grow inward, leading to corneal irritation. Surgery is an option to remove excess skin. It is similar to congenital entropion, where the eyelid develops without skin folds.
A small eyelid abnormality, an epiblepharon might go unnoticed or could cause eye disease. An epiblepharon is an unnecessary, superfluous fold of skin on the eyelid. This can cause the eyelid to curl abnormally and cause the eyelashes to curl, thereby irritating the eye.
More common in people who are of Asian or Hispanic ancestry, the extra skin fold can affect the upper or lower eyelid. It is caused by too many muscle fibers in the eyelid and too much skin. Typically, an epiblepharon is found at the edge of the eyelid and runs horizontally across the eyelid. The condition is present at birth and does not develop later in life.
The presence of this skin can affect the direction in which eyelashes grow. Instead of growing outward and away from the eye, as most people’s eyelashes do, eyelashes can grow inward, in front of the eyeball. This can cause a medical condition known as entropion, in which the eyelashes rub against the eyeball and the cornea becomes irritated.
This gets worse over time, and the affected person shows symptoms such as eye pain, abnormally high tear production, and aversion to looking at light. The abnormal positioning of the eyelashes is most evident when the person with epiblepharon looks down. The presence of the condition may go undiagnosed, especially in children, by doctors who treat eye irritations on a regular basis. If extra skin is present on the upper eyelid, the eyelid may appear saggy with too much skin, similar to another unrelated eye condition called blepharochalasis.
Surgery is one possible option to treat an epiblepharon that is causing medical problems such as corneal irritation. The procedure simply removes the excess skin and then allows the eyelashes to grow outward, away from the eyeball, in the normal way. This procedure may not even require an overnight stay in a clinic or hospital. Because epiblepharon tends to become less of a problem as the patient ages, surgery may not even be necessary for some people.
Epiblepharon is similar to another eye condition that can present at birth called congenital entropion. Entropion refers to any eye condition caused by inward turned eyelashes. Congenital entropion, on the other hand, specifically refers to an eyelid that develops without skin folds, so the eyelashes always face inward, as opposed to epiblepharon, where the superfluous skin fold is the source of the problem.
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