Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured 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, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided 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 they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed 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 selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
