Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies 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 to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
