SEMINARS

Facial aesthetic surgery has become the main focus in the Coupure Centre for Plastic Surgery in Gent. Since 1999 we have taken the initiative of organizing teaching courses in this subspecialty. In the early years the meetings were oriented towards a regional and national attendance and were called “Coupure Seminars”. In 2004, on the occasion of the launch of our first book, “The MACS-lift Short Scar Rhytidectomy”, we had the great opportunity to gather a very distinguished international faculty, with the goal of sharing and discussing different ideas on facial aesthetic surgery, brought in a convivial and open atmosphere. This meeting, the Vth Coupure Seminar, was baptised CATFAS, which stands for Controversies, Art and Technology in Facial Aesthetic Surgery.

The mission of this meeting was to create a forum for discussion on established and changing concepts in the field of facial aesthetic surgery, a specialty which is constantly evolving.
The recommendations to the faculty was to bring very practical information with many technical tips and tricks and also focus on possible complications. Live surgery was part of the concept, brought with state of the art audiovisual techniques. High Definition broadcasting became the standard from the 2007 CATFAS meeting.

Thanks to the high quality contributions of the outstanding faculty members and room for animated discussions, the CATFAS meetings were reported by many participants as a “think tank” in our subspecialty. In the mean time the local hosts Alexis Verpaele and Patrick Tonnard, continued to organize smaller scale in-depth one-day teaching courses on the technique they popularized, the MACS-lift Short Scar rhytidectomy.

The meetings are all organized in English and take place in our city of Gent, which is being appreciated by visitors as a hospitable, charming city with a tremendous historical value. We kindly invite you to one of our future meetings, “CATFAS” or “Advanced MACS-lift courses” and hope they will be for you a memorable source of knowledge and friendship as well as an enjoyable journey to our hospitable city.