Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
