‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term 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 youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables 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 needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested 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 selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|