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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of 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 skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “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 dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|