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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, 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 first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|