Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat 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 aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw 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 house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue 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 facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended 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 day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
