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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” 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 surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking 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 describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did 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 where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas 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 needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|