Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as 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 couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
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 attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
