Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen 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 jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate 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 growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “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 allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
