‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied 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 filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|