‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” 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 believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|