‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells 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 jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax 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 follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate 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 increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “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.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|