Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective 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 becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating 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 dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort 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 youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself 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 blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
