Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive 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 is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue 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 procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
