‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|