‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum 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’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods 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.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon 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 eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|