Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says 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 heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ 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 requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts 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 surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on people 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 dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable 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 completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. 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 lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
