Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse 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 online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” 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 SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders 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 different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
