Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud 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 tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – 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 half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “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 surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
