Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” 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 surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” 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 regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue 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 face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
