Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure 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 “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic 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 further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
