Wade Brock, MD, Fellow Member
It’s safe to say that the 2022 AACS Cadaver Workshop was a remarkable success! On the Wednesday prior to the general 2022 AACS Scientific Meeting, 24 attendees and 16 faculty convened at 0600 for a bus ride to the facility. The facilities for our cadaver lab courses are always state of the art. This year our course was conducted at Medical Innovations & Training Institute in Henderson, Nevada. The bus ride with one another and breakfast gave everyone the opportunity to either catch up or meet new colleagues. Because most of us have been cooped up to a great degree, and because our last meeting was held in February of 2020 immediately before the “shut down,” there was a lot of enthusiasm to be back together again.
After breakfast, we began with a morning of didactics covering oculofacial surgery. Represented topics included upper eyelid blepharoplasty, ptosis repair with external and internal approaches, the tarsal strip procedure, endoscopic brow lifting, and lower eyelid blepharoplasty. We also had a bonus lecture for the morning given by Dr. Marco Barusco: correcting face-lift incisions with FUT. Drs. Emily Lo, Amiya Prasad, J. Kevin Duplechain, and yours truly covered the other oculofacial topics. We were disappointed that Dr. Sheila Barbarino was unable to make it. Next year, Sheila!
The afternoon session followed lunch with lectures on SMAS plication, treatment of the neck, deep plane face lift, short scar face lift, and facial fat grafting. Drs. Mark Mandell-Brown, James Koehler, J. Kevin Duplechain, and Alex Sobel delivered the lectures on face lifts.
We kept the lectures short ensuring ample lab time with approximately 75% of the day spent applying surgical approaches and techniques on the cadavers. The attendees were glad to see that the lab had been set up as advertised with small groups of no more than three attendees to a table with two instructors. We had time to tackle everything we wished to. Syringes of fat had been prepared the day prior so that everyone had an opportunity to apply grafts. Endoscopes, facial implants, barbed suture, a plethora of surgical instruments, endotines, and a helium/RF energy device were all available. It is only through our corporate sponsors that this instrumentation and supplies was possible. We are grateful and wish to express our thanks to Apyx Medical, Black & Black Surgical, Implantech Associates Inc., Suneva Medical, Tulip Medical Products, Hayden Medical, MicroAire, and Surgical Specialties Inc.
Even though we were at the facility for ten hours, the day went by very quickly. The instructors were extremely pleased with the engagement from the attendees. There was a lot of positive feedback and agreement from attendees and instructors alike that this was one of our best labs to date. Here’s to more great ones in the future! If you didn’t make it this year, please plan on joining us next time, but sign up early…the spaces fill up quickly!
