Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option 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 surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
