‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable 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 leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. 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 “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables 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 using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels 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 surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|