Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use 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 advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|