[Which treatment for the malar bags?].

The treatment of malar bags is known to be particularly difficult; although it is not the most frequent palpebral anomaly justifying a surgical recourse, this problem cannot be ignored. It is important to distinguish their minor forms and to be able to analyze them in order to propose the best to our patients. We review the literature concerning this subject. The various surgical techniques are discussed and we present five of our cases. Even taking into account its various evolutions, the standard lower eyelid blepharoplasty can correct neither the ptosis nor the excess of orbicularis oculi muscle, which appear to be the main components of the malar bag. Publications, precisely mentioning malar bags or festoons, analyzing their physiopathology or their treatments, are few. We discuss the current data of the literature and on the results obtained in our experiment, and the surgical techniques suggested for their treatment. All the techniques suggested for the malar bags remain local or regional approaches. Results obtained with those techniques do not seem effective to us: although it has not been specifically proposed for the treatment of malar bags, the midface sub-periosteal lift, combining a skin flap lower eyelid dissection and a subperiosteal malar dissection, seems to be able to correct the lowest part of the orbicularis oculi muscle due to its concentric action and its major vertical vector of traction. This study underlines the importance of clinical analysis of the malar bags to appreciate the contribution of each element. So the surgeon will be able to choose the most adapted treatment, which is most often a midface sub-periosteal lift associated with a blepharoplasty.