Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new 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 thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor 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.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
