‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ 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 requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer 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 individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|