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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, 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

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London 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 passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant 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 underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as 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. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|