‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum 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 down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|