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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy 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 eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, 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 nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|