‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “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 very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, 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 surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed 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.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended 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 day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|