Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up 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 video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done 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 point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
