‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

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 different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|