‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|