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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed 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 video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, 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 growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|