‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for 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.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery 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 dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|