‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal 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 appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|