‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing 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 bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|