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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over 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 years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic 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 lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift 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 operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|