‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – 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 face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing 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 touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|