‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first 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 okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on 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.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” 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 not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – 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 forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|