Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, 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 stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed 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.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor 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, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
