‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|