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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, 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 result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties 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 surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “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 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 single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, 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 regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|