Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting 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 late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas 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 needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
