Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor 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’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says 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 passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, 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 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 completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
