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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, 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 facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down 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 believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|