‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – 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 outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed 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: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to 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 asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic 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 see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” 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 did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 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 injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|