Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer 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 express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors 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 – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to 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 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
