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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – 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 Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London 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 bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|