Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer 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’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
