Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – 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 brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
