Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband 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 online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “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 additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
