Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built 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 known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers 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 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 numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. 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 undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
