Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers 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 wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving 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 might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
