Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade 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 Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen 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 jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – 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 twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
