‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on 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 facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says 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.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|