Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
