‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. 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 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 expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of 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 youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|