‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|