Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though 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 cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our 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 connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
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 weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – 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 twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
