‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – 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 address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” 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 ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|