Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 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 jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – 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 entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. 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 ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted 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 doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
