Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined 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 point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with 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 started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
