Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously 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 real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested 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 recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
