‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement 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 last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|