5th DASIL (Dermatologic and Aesthetic Surgery International League) Annual Meeting – Dubai – the United Arab Emirates

 

my talk on scar management
my talk on scar management

The 5th DASIL Annual Meeting was held from October 19 to 23 in Dubai – the city that competes with Las Vegas in richness and luxury. After a night spent on a plane, I started my adventure with an advanced course on skin surgery. It was not only exciting, but also very informative to work at the same faculty together with such grand doctors as Richard Motley (England), Andrew Birnie (England), Kee-Yang Chung (South Korea), Hugh Gloster (USA), Marshall Murdoch (South Africa), Stephen Murray (Australia), Laith Akkash (Jordan), George Martin (USA), Alessandro Gualdi (Italy), and Lawrence Field (USA). In the next days I described my experience in scar treatment, in the treatment of facial and neck laxity by means of radio-frequency needles and micro-focused ultrasounds. I also spoke about treatment of the lower eyelid using a CO2 laser. I listened to a number of reports of a truly great value. First of all, I was impressed how drastic could be skin tumor treatment change. Drugs have recently appeared on the market and future pharmacological evolution (which is not so distant) could reduce almost to zero skin tumor growth and thus eliminate any need for surgery. I liked a lot the report of Stephen Murray (Australia) on the real effectiveness of PDT in the actinic keratoses treatment and I found to be interesting some reports of my Indian colleagues who described their experience in the treatment of dark skin (skin types IV, V and VI). I noticed that the use of focused ultrasound is becoming extremely popular in Asia (with considerable scientific evidence of their effectiveness) and I understood I should also show some interest in cosmeceuticals (all treatment protocols, today and in any part of the world, always include the use of cosmeceuticals). I enjoyed listening to a report of Uwe Paasch (Germany) in which he featured what should not be done in the use of lasers as a system to introduce drugs into the skin. It was exciting to see the results of my work published in a recent Karger’s book called “Cosmetic Photodynamic Therapy” (editor Michael Gold) in which, together with Marc Rosher (South Africa) and Girish Munavalli (USA), I wrote a chapter on cosmetic effects of PDT associated with microneedling and IPL.

In spite of intensive scientific program, I could spend some time with my old friends Marc Roscher (South Africa), Amy Taub (USA) and Michael Gold (USA). Next year the congress will be held in Shanghai and I am looking very much forward to it.