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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons 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 former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

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

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field 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.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift 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, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|