‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells 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 Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive 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 is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift 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 touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|