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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see 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. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|