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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says 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” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever 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 long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended 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 jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|