Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve 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 obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed 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, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
