‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’
Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “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 advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, 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 Florida proposed 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 suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|