Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t 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 okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
