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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, 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’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|