‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic 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 observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed 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 obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|