‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse 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 tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years 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 facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates 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 optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street 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 secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum 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 reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight 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. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|