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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|