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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant 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.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, 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 looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|