‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates 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 appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of 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 forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|