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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means 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’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” 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 think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|