Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas 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 needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
