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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon 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’s how 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 look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in 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 allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just 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 patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|