Conferences

Sunday, 23^rd March 2014, at 11 o'clock, at the Small Hall of the National Theatre of Bucharest, Professor Ioan Lascăr, MD will hold a conference entitled "Past, Present and Future in Plastic Surgery". Ticket fee: 16 lei.

About the conference

Although Plastic Surgery has been recently defined as a stand-alone specialty, its beginnings are more distant, closely linked with those of medicine and surgery. It started and developed out of the necessity to correct apparent morphological deficiencies and later on, the possibility of also correcting the functional deficiencies associated with them, a fact that can be considered one of the oldest ideals in the art of healing. Much closer to the present day, the necessity of improving the image of the body in relation with today's ideal shapes and standards also surfaced.

Plastic Surgery is the most recent monospeciality in surgery. Despite this, in the last decades, "traditional" Plastic Surgery changed. Many techniques and types of surgical interventions which were part of the plastic surgeon's arsenal had been taken over and used by other specialties. In many cases, plastic surgeons became specialized in other, more restricted areas, or combined them with other clinical areas more or less related to one-another. An increasing number of plastic surgeons become incapable of covering the entire area of classical Plastic Surgery. As it is the case with General Surgery, Plastic Surgery as we know it is no more; thus, by presenting the past, we try to provide some information regarding the beginnings of our society. In so doing, we will come to the conclusion that there are some surgical procedures that had been in use for thousands of years and that are still appreciated at the present time in the day-to-day practice.

Although the term "plastic" within "Plastic Surgery" comes from the Greek "plastikos" meaning "to model", the true origins of Plastic Surgery precede its linguistic roots by a long time. The origins of this specialty are documented in old Egyptian papyruses and in Sanskrit texts from Ancient India.

The true date of birth for plastic and reconstructive surgery is still debated by historians. The Egyptian doctors are credited as the first performers of surgical interventions that belong to the current assembly of the specialty.

The two World Wars of the twentieth century propelled Plastic Surgery into the sphere of public interest due to the extremely large number of both the traumas and their extreme complexity caused by weapons of mass destruction.

During the conference at the National Theatre, Professor Ioan Lascăr, MD will hold a brief introduction about the history of Plastic Surgery both world-wide and in Romania, the factors that determined the split of this specialty from the body of general surgery, the factors that determined the rapid development of techniques within the specialty (conditioned by the two World Wars) and the development of plastic surgery in the 70's, especially the moment when reconstructive microsurgical techniques were introduced. The conference will end with the presentation of two cases that generated large interest in the media.

About Professor Ioan Lascăr, MD

He is the founder, administrator and head of the top Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Microsurgery Ward at the Bucharest Emergency Hospital. Presently, the Ward tackles an extremely complex range of social problems, having more than 60 fully qualified plastic surgeons and surgeons undergoing training from a total of approximately 250 attending physicians and residents from across the country. The volume of activity and the complexity of the surgical interventions performed, its accessibility, doubled by the educational and scientific activity and its research, as well as the quality of the results make this Ward a successor of the Romanian School for plastic surgery.

He is a permanent delegate for Romania in the European Board of Plastic Reconstruction and Aesthetic Surgery, permanently and actively involved in issues that regard international activity. Professor Ioan Lascăr, MD initiated and coordinated a number of educational, scientific and professional activities in the area of Plastic Surgery, as well as several national and international congresses. He trained residents and students from Romania, the United States of America, Ukraine, Albania, Greece, Italy, Germany, China, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan, the Republic of Moldova, Yemen, Morocco, Serbia and the Mauritius Islands.

He was the president of the Romanian Association of Plastic Surgeons between 2003 and 2010.

Translated by: Tudor Alexandru-Ionuţ