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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up 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 video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached 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 ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – 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 booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|