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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic 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 individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce 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 injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|