‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because 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, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum 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’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes 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 attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “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 believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida 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 selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift 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 operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|