Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how 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 look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit 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 superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis 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
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer 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 numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed 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.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
