VII Dissection Techniques In Lymphatic Microsurgery

VII Dissection Techniques In Lymphatic Microsurgery is organized by Reconstructive Microsurgery European School (RMES) and will be held from Jan 27 - 29, 2025 at Jesus Uson Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, Caceres, Extremadura, Spain.

Theme: Diagnostics, indications, treatment options, postoperative care and practical training.

Description:
Lymphatic microsurgery is a field experiencing a continuously growing interest within the plastic surgeons community.

This practical course focused on specific technical lymphatic microsurgery skills as well as pre and intraoperative examination of lymphatics is designed for residents and specialists in plastic surgery (worldwide) to learn or further refine their skills in lymphatic microsurgery.

During the last 40 years, much progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms of disease and the ways to treat it, nevertheless no efficient standardised therapy exists to date. Moreover, actual scientific evidence sustains the concept of “preventive lymphatic microsurgery” to prevent secondary lymphedema in patients undergoing major tumor surgery involving excision of major lymphatic stations.

One of the most challenging caveats to achieve success in lymphedema treatment is learning to perform the microsurgical lymphatic procedures from intraoperative identification of lymph vessels to performing lymphovenous anastomoses or harvesting a vascularised lymph-nodes to be used later on the same patient as free tissue transfer. Such skills can only be learned and mastered in the laboratory on experimental animal models and then further refined on human tissue.

Performing such surgery requires not only precise microsurgical and supramicrosurgical skills but also structured knowledge about the preoperative examination of lymphatic vessels (e.g. clinical examination, PDE Examination, Lympho-MRI). These procedures need proper training before being applied clinically.