‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, 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 all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states 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 secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains 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. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, 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 repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” 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 never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers 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 wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate 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 might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|