Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, 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 required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor 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, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
