‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding 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 underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable 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.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|