‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously 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 Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains 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 secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients 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 years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|