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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous 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 puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour 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 conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting 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 entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|