Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first 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 house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
