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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|