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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial 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 had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe 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 start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, 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 purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting 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 “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|