Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “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 procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose 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 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least 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 reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving 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 exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list 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 doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove 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 half-day operation, including a three-day|
