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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for 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 revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|