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 loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up 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 video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age 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 requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers 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 filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
