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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|