‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts 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 patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt 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 filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if 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 facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her 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 jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|