Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy 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 jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London 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 see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, 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 repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least 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 “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, 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 local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ 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 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
