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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds 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 major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|