Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided 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 cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
