Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional 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 online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make 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, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
