‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward 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 stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before 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 under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|