‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” 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 secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis 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 repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances 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,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned 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 make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to 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 adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|