Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity 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 alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
