‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online 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 cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|