Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding 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 built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, 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 is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “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 facing 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 started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|