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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured 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 facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least 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 reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block 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 ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to 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 surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|