Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat 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 result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw 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 had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
