Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “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 among a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic 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 individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human 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 supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did 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.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
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 the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option 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 touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
