Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving 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 underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent 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 currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient 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 adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
