Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” 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 eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic 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 individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS 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 endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts 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 thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant 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 done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
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 just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift 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 day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
