Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London 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 somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
