Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat 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 minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on 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 typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
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 just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection 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 blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek 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, plus a three-day|
