Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” 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 did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
