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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|