‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell 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 one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, 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 rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin 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 repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “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 ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|