‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|