Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon 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 structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
