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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat 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 is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|