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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (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,” states 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 see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor 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 single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|