Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says 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 somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
