Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
