‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat 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 six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over 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 heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting 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 very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for 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 aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

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 effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|