‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

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

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity 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 touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|