Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “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 injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If 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 migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
