Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing 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 cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables 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, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
