Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell 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.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates 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 cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
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 only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
