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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, 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 explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could 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 Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|