Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up 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 poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to 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 appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” 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.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
