‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates 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.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|