Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
