‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous 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 puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes 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 not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant 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 injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|