‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states 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 held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous 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 tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although 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 London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, 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 dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|