Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly 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 Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties 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 injectable gels 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 done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors 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 replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas 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 suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor 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, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
