Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to 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 expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
