Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include 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 cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
