Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates 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 look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, 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 done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” 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 lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state 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 selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
