Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, 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’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in 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.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
