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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because 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 appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says 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 individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|