‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says 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.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing 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 reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|