‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-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 wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective 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 becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting 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 produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted 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 advised her 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 surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|