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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” 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 bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” 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 “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted 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 doctor recommended that a facial lift 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 the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ 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 half-day surgery, including a three-day|