‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, 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 six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive 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’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant 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 right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|