‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates 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

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “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 procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit 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 scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|