Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, 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 following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “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 results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research 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 ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe 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 six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
