Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic 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 choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating 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 not just being used for the express purpose 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 purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
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 attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift 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’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
