‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS 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 operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|