‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did 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 right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled 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 jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|