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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial 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: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, 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

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged 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 body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned 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 manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|