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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone 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, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned 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 twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate 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 needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing 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 solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to 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 adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|