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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-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 secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online 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.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised 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 deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|