‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on 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 also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor 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 jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|