‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose 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 is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers 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 pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift 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 surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|