Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating 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 excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer 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 clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
