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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London 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 individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|