Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial 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 needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; 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 obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, 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 follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
