‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

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 clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video 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 among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on 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 results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|