Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen 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 cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, 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,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called 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 brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
