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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands 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 operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. 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 “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called 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 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 will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|