Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger 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 injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers 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 plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract 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 half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
