Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed 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 indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – 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 reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor 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 found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
