‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’
Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw 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 home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “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 known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery 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 excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue 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 facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. 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 will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|