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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks 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 eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” 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 clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

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 the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|