‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer 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 is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “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 right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended 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 eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|