ISCFS XIII Biennial International Congress - 26 to 30 September 2009

The ISCFS XIII Biennial International Congress and Distraction Symposium have closed
with a record participation of over 450 participants.

The Organising Committee would like to thank the Congress delegates,
sponsors and exhibitors for their participation and support .

Take a look at the ISCFS-DISTRACTION 2009 souvenir photographs click here.

See you in 2011 in South Africa !

On behalf of the ISCFS, the council & officers, and the academic committee of the congress, I welcome you to Oxford for ISCFS XIII incorporating elements of the Paris Distraction Symposium.

We have been extremely fortunate in having had a submission of 447 abstracts from all aspects of craniofacial care submitted. This has allowed the academic committee, working on a blinded/anonymized basis, to make selections which have enabled us to design a high quality and comprehensive academic programme across the period of the congress.

We have also been able to incorporate significant distraction expertise for the Distraction Symposium as well as drawing on other extensive experience in all elements of craniofacial care to address various controversial areas of craniofacial care at the pre-Symposium on Sunday. We hope this will put our delegates in a position to appreciate some of the consensus views on various subjects.

The unprecedented number of registrants for this ISCFS congress has meant that we have had to make substantial changes to the conference facility in order to avoid having to turn away potential registrants. This has been successfully achieved allowing us to host all applicants and despite the current “financial crisis” on a worldwide basis which has resulted in a significant decrease in corporate sponsorship for educational purposes such as this meeting.

In this regard I would also like to thank our sponsors who have been able to contribute to the meeting.

I hope that you have both an enjoyable and successful congress in terms of the academic programme, as well as establishing new contacts and renewing friendships within the social environment of Oxford.

Steven Arthur Wall,
MBBCh (rand) FRCS FRCPCH FCS (SA) plast
ISCFS President, 2007-2009

Dear Colleagues,

It is a genuine pleasure and a true honour to welcome you to the « Paris Distraction meeting » taking place in Oxford in 2009, under the auspices of the XIII ISCFS biennial meeting.

First, I would like to thank all ISCFS past-presidents who unanimously supported the idea of this exceptional link between the two events. The geographical location of the ISCFS meeting in Europe is infrequent and coincided this year with the Distraction Symposium. But I would like to address special thanks to the current (2007-2009) ISCFS President, Steven Wall, who made it possible, by seizing this unique opportunity: this has meant considerable additional work to synchronize the two events, but the scientific potential of the two has been realized, with a record number of abstracts in the history of both meetings.

Some of you may not know that the idea itself of an independent “distraction symposium in Paris” was promoted by Patrick Diner and Marie-Paule Vazquez during the 1995 ISCFS meeting hosted by Daniel Marchac in Saint-Tropez, when distraction techniques started to appear as extremely promising, soon after the initial communications during the 1993 ISCFS meeting held by Fernando Ortiz-Monasterio in Oaxaca. This led to scientifically fruitful Distraction Meetings in Paris in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2006, in which Joe McCarthy (past president) and Fernando Molina, both ISCFS members, pioneered the way in distraction techniques. Now that distraction is a well established procedure in all fields of craniofacial, maxillofacial and oral surgery, it is part of every meeting in any specialty, and the rationale for a separate distraction meeting has disappeared. This conjunction of the two events is therefore a way to close the loop back to ISCFS, where it started.

However, there is a much larger challenge in the conjunction of the XIII ISCFS Meeting and the Distraction Symposium in 2009. Over the years, we have met in the Paris meeting quite a few maxillofacial surgeons truly innovative in distraction and with considerable experience. Some of them have contributed significantly to the field and are providing rigorous scientific studies. We have supported the idea that all the disciplines should get the opportunity to know the ISCFS group. I truly believe in the collaboration of all specialties, toward the unique goal of achieving better treatment for our patients with complex conditions. I hope this goal has also been achieved. It is not the least of my preoccupations, trying to follow the strategic planning of the society initiated by past-presidents Ken Salyer and David David who deserve special thanks for that.

This ISCFS meeting is the first one after the death of Paul Tessier (1907-2008). All surgeons of the cephalic area owe him something, but Craniofacial Surgery has lost its father. Paul Tessier had called distraction osteogenesis a revolution. This revolution might have come to the end of its cycle but immense challenges are arising, such as biologically-assisted surgery.

Keeping this in mind, I wish you all an excellent meeting in Oxford. MCI, our Organising Secretariat has achieved a great job in helping for the preparation of both meetings.

Eric Arnaud,

ISCFS Secretary-Treasurer

Co-organiser of the Distraction Symposium with Patrick Diner