The first President of the ISAPS, Dr. John Lewis and his Executive Foundation, beyond the organization of congresses of the ISAPS, decided immediately after the first congress in Rio de Janeiro, February 1972, that the ISAPS should organize periodic instructional courses worldwide with different levels of teaching, according to the development of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in the different countries (Figs. 13-14).

The First Instructional Course was held in Florence, Italy, from May 27 to 31, 1973, immediately preceding the II Congress in Israel; Ernesto Caronni was coordinator with Giuseppe Francesconi and Valerio Micheli-Pellegrini acting as Local Arrangement Chairmen, in coordination with the Italian Society for Reconstructive Plastic Surgery under the presidency of Simone Teich Alasia (Fig. 13).

Already this first course set the highest standards of teaching level in a country with an elevated level of plastic surgery. Florence, one of the most important Italian cities in history of the arts, was the ideal setting for this first course on Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The Government Officers and City Authorities fully cooperated, and in the Mayor’s welcome speech, he especially recognized and emphasized the psychosocial importance of this field of Medicine. Aesthetic Surgery was compared to Renaissance Art.

Not only the social arrangements were excellent, but also the auditorium was impressive. Outstanding panels on most subjects of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery were organized and surgical procedures were directly transmitted on a large screen. The surgeries were performed by Mr. Matthews and Dr. Castañares on rhytidectomy, Drs. Peck, Jost and Vilar-Sancho on rhinoplasty, Gonzalez-Ulloa on profiloplasty, John Lewis and Claude Dufourmentel on mammaplasty, Raymond Villain on abdominoplasty and Thomas Cronin and Simon Fredricks on augmentation mammaplasty.

Televised live surgery was repeated on the second Instructional Course in Jerusalem, on June 10 and 11, 1973, at the Hadassah Medical Center, directed by Drs. Zvi Neumann and Richard Webster. Surgeries were performed by Drs. Courtiss (augmentation mammaplasty), thigh-buttock lifts by Pitanguy, abdominal lipectomy by Regnault, and reduction mammaplasties by Lewis, Hinderer, Dufourmentel and Pitanguy.

Live surgery was also used at the Instructional Course directed by Paule Regnault in Montreal, 1987. It was later on substituted by video presentations, with the first video-panel course organized by Guy Jost in Paris (1988). This type of course was very highly rated by all attendants as were the anatomical dissection courses, organized by Guy Jost in Nice (1988) and thereafter by Carson Lewis, in collaboration with the ‘Lipoplasty Society of North America’ in San Diego, CA, in 1991.

Individual courses were introduced in Paris, 1975, by Bruce Williams and Jacques Oulié; in Mexico, 1977, directed by Richard Stark and in Berlin, 1990, by Course Director, Carson Lewis, who added one more day with individual 2-hour instructional courses. The inscription to these courses was very high and they were very well rated; together with the video-panel-courses, they seem to be most appropriate for teaching, as also the combinations of lectures with short technical videos introduced by Yann Levet in 1993.

42 courses have been organized by the ISAPS up to 1993 in all parts of the world. Without any doubt, these courses have largely contributed to the development of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, to update the knowledge among Plastic Surgeons already engaged in this field and mainly for their residents. In 20 years, almost 5,000 Plastic Surgeons -probably one half of the Plastic Surgeons registered in the Confederation- attended these courses, including those who repeated several courses (Figs.15-16).

At the beginning the Presidents and Executive Foundations choose the Directors for the courses. On September 12, 1976(2), at the EXCO meeting in Baden-Baden under the presidency of Ulrich Hinderer, it was decided to appoint a specific Postgraduate Course Director for each term of office. Jack Davis moved, seconded by Paule Regnault-, that the first “Chairman of the Foundation for Instructional Courses” be Julien Reich, who proposed Ulrich Hinderer and John Lewis to join his Foundation. The first guidelines for Courses and evaluation of standards for Faculty Members were developed by Julien Reich and Ulrich Hinderer, as well as the evaluation forms to be accomplished by the attendants, when receiving the diplomas, first presented at the EXCO meeting in Lausanne, June 1978(72). The result of the questionnaires helped to improve the program of the following Courses. It must be stated, that all Courses received a high or very high evaluation by the attendants.

From 1977 on and up to 1992 in Guadalajara those Faculty Members who had participated in more than 5 courses, received a diploma of “Postgraduate Professor of ISAPS”, designed by Jack Davis and approved at the Executive Foundation meeting in Lausanne, on June 1978(72).

The following Course Directors were appointed: from 1976 to 79, Julien Reich; 79 to 81, Ulrich Hinderer; 81 to 83, Jose Guerrerosantos; 83 to 85, Ricardo Baroudi; 85 to 87, Paule Regnault; 87 to 89, Ray Elliott Jr.; 89 to 92, William Lindsay and Carson Lewis; 92 to 93, Thomas Biggs and Yann Levet.

The Local Arrangement Chairpersons of the Courses were elected from the prominent ISAPS members of the respective countries or areas where the courses were to be held.

Fig. 13: Charter Member Roger Mouly, who, as General Secretary of the IPRS, contributed to the integration of ISAPS as a Chapter, with Jack Mustardé, Founding Member and Simone Teich Alasia, President of the Italian Society, on occasion of the first Postgraduate Course.

Fig. 14: A scene of the 3rd Instructional Course held at “Clinica Planas” in Barcelona in September 1974, with Drs. Goulian, John R. Lewis, Blair O. Rogers, Jaime Planas, Trudy Vogt and Ulrich Hinderer in the first row, and Salvador Castañares, Gordon Letterman and our late Historian, Maxine Shurter in the back row.

Fig. 15: The Faculty of the 20th Postgraduate Instructional Course in Uppsala, Sweden, March 1983 (Drs. Mustardé, Gamal E. Beheri (Vicepresident), Seiichi Ohmori (6th President), Guerrerosantos (10th President), Shurter, Strömbeck, Johannson, Onizuka (Vice-President)) Meyer (9th President), Elliott (Secretary General), Letterman, Lewin (Historian), Baroudi (President-Elect 1993), Hinderer (3rd President), Avelar, Nicolle, Whitaker and several others.

Fig. 16: The 28th Postgraduate Course in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, 1988, a joint course with the Education Council of the Iberolatinamerican Federation. (The Faculty: First row: Drs. Coiffman (Local Arrangement Chairman), Georgiade (Secretary General), Elliott (Secretary General), Meyer (9th President), Roa Roa; Second row: Guerrerosantos, Pitanguy, Ely (Vice-President), Baroudi (President-Elect 1993), Planas (Visiting Professor), Fontana, Ojeda (Vice-President), Baker, Watanabe (Vice-President), Camirand; Third row: Ortiz-Monasterio (Education Council Co-Chairman), Avelar, Ribeiro, Loeb, Bruck, Hinderer and Lindsay (Education Council Chairman).