Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically 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 block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving 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 might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – 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 arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
