‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer 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 portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, 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 cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|