Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended 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 mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
