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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. 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 – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address 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 major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built 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 supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done 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 point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|