‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term 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 do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed 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 Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|