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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in 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 unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|