Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional 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 video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on 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 rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do 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 injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before 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 lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
