‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new 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,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances 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 move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables 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 – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option 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, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|