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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. 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 downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

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 effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option 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 surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|