‘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 party. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure 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 numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed 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.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” 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 capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might 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 surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|