‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic 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 see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London 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.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear 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 block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight 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 cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|