‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal 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 how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” 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 not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|