Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says 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 structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
