Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, 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 skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. 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 outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – 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 “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|