Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue 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 face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
