‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first 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 needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using 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 obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|