Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
