Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes 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.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he 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 adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
