Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes 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 attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions 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 nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
