‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to 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’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer 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 numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself 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 scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|