‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial 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 in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, 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 head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|