Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed 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 Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up 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 surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
