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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, 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 is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone 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 believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|