A jaw-dropping before and after plastic surgery transformation has left social media users speechless, after a man is pictured looking decades younger post surgery.
Images from plastic surgery clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, showing a middle-aged man become unrecognisable after facial surgery have been viewed by 37.3M on X, with commentators divided over whether or not the results could be real.
Social media user @D_Radiance, who posted the images to X, wrote: ‘No, Turkey surgeons are f*****g wild with their eight surgeries at once… this man came back looking 30 years younger.’
In the original Instagram post by the plastic surgery clinic @estemedistanbultr it claims the patient ‘Michael’ has had a combination of facial surgeries from facelifts to rhinoplasties, also known as nose jobs.
But social media users have questioned if they are just being ‘trolled’ and joked that he has just ‘got a new head’ or transformed ‘into his own grandson’.
In a post of patient Michael, pictured, the clinic claims he has had a ‘ facelift , necklift, lower eyelid blepharoplasty, upper blepharoplasty, buccal fat removal, rhinoplasty, and hair transplant procedures’
Dr Mikhail also believes the patient has had some jaw surgery to achieve a more angular look, which isn’t listed on the Instagram post
MailOnline approached the Istanbul clinic for comment on the remarkable case — and a number of other similarly breathtaking makeovers on their page — but received no response.
In the clinics Instagram post about ‘Michael’, which has 15.5k likes, it claims the patient has had a ‘facelift, neck lift, lower eyelid blepharoplasty, upper blepharoplasty, buccal fat removal, rhinoplasty, and hair transplant procedures.’
We spoke to top plastic surgeons and asked: could such dramatic changes in appearance really be achieved by the operations they’re claimed to have undergone?
They said they were ‘skeptical’. Bristol based consultant plastic surgeon Dr Nigel Mercer, who specialises in facial reconstruction surgery said the ‘skin quality’ of the after pictures were suspicious.
‘If you look at the texture of his skin in the before picture you can tell that man has either been a smoker or he is quite old.
‘In the after picture he has the skin of a 35 year old and that’s not possible,’ he told MailOnline.
He added that facial hair disguises scars from a facelift, but suggests the difference in his brow shape implies other surgeries or editing is at play.
Mr Mercer said: ‘His eyebrow shape before and after is completely different. This can happen to some extent with facelift surgery, but just looking at the difference between his upper lid and the third part of his brow is a hell of a change.
‘His face is a completely different shape, and I can’t believe you can do that with just buckle fat removal, which is removal of the fat pads in the cheeks to create of slimmer more angular facial appearance.’
London-based NHS plastics surgeon Mark Mikhail said: ‘Even in a dystopian world where it was possible to do this [with surgery] they would have had to do more operations than they claim to have done.’
Comparing the unbelievable transformation to the 1997 thriller Face Off, he said the flawless skin, eye colour changes and lack of scars are some of the big giveaways that these images have been heavily photoshopped.
‘They say he’s had a face lift but there is no scar. With a facelift you have to make a cut around and behind the ear and when you pull the face back you end up bringing the side burn right next the ear,’ added Dr Mikhail.
‘Men usually have a fingers gap between their ear which can disappear and he has still got that in the after pictures.’
Dr Mikhail also believes jaw surgery would have been necessary to achieve a more angular look in the after picture, which isn’t listed on the Instagram post, and that his lower neck, which would not have been part of the neck lift, also has better skin quality, suggesting the images have been edited.
An Instagram post by the clinic shows the before and after pictures of patient Miss Dilek. In the post, which has 26.5K likes, the clinic claims the pictures show the results after ‘two years of rhinoplasty face lift and blepheroplasty surgeries’
Another Instagram post by the same clinic shows the shockingly different before and after pictures of patient ‘Miss Dilek’.
In the post, which has 26.5K likes, the clinic claims the pictures show the results after ‘two years of rhinoplasty face lift and blepheroplasty surgeries’.
Social media users questioned if the post was a joke and other suggested she would need a new passport after such a transformation.
‘These pictures are wildly different, these are not the same people,’ Dr Mikhail said.
‘Even with the surgeries they have said. The skin quality is totally different and her eyes are different colours,’ he added.
Experts say the lighting in the images make it almost impossible to tell if it is the same women and suggest the pictures have been highly edited
Dr Mercer is also ‘very skeptical’ that the two before and after images are of the same woman.
‘She does look completely and utterly different, there is no doubt about that. The main thing that makes us look old is our skin and the transformation of her skin is absolutely phenomenal,’ he said.
In the first image the patient has brown eyes and in the second she has blue. But it’s not just the change in eye colour that make surgeons suspicious.
Dr Mercer explains it’s hard to compare the eye shapes because she is looking in opposite directions.
Although there is no mention that she has had lip filler, both Dr Mercer and Dr Mikhail point to the obvious difference in the shape and fullness of her lips.
‘Her upper lip can only be done with a lip lift, but I can’t see any scars from a lip lift,’ Dr Mercer said.
‘Her upper lip is a fraction of the height that it was before. If you do a lip lift directly if you lose the white roll of the lip which is really quite well formed in her and the lower lip is completely different,’ he added.
However, it is the lighting of this image that makes it almost impossible to decipher if it is the same person.
Dr Mercer said: ‘With before and after’s you need to have the same lighting. Here the after pictures are bleached out. That’s what Madonna uses on tour because the bright white light bleaches up all the color of the skin takes up all the shadows.
‘So, before with no makeup on, and then this one after with makeup on, it could potentially be the same person. But it’s been highly, highly edited.’
But Dr Mercer warns that even if it is possible to achieve these dramatic transformations, these surgeries can be high risk especially when travelling abroad.
He said: ‘There are some very good surgeons in Turkey, but there is also a lot of significant business practice of people being sold a conglomeration of things.
‘It is relatively high risk surgery and it is not the sort of thing you can have done by flying in and getting surgery and then getting back on an aircraft to fly back again.
‘If you get a lot of facial swelling you should not fly for at least three weeks to a month. Any problems, any infections or breathing problems should be dealt with before you come home.’
Source: Mail Online
