ADVANCED COURSE OF MASTOLOGY

MANOSMED COURSE 2011

BEIRUT, LEBANON

REPORT OF THE COURSE DIRECTOR

 

INTRODUCTION

In the last official meeting of MANOSMED in October 2010 at Geneva, Switzerland, it was decided that MANOSMED should offer two courses of Mastology every year, one in the autumn season and the other in the spring season. This decision has to be applied since 2011. The first course to be offered in the spring of 2011 will be in Beirut. Professor Négib Geahchan, from the Saint Joseph university of Lebanon, was appointed as the course director.

PLANIFICATION OF THE BEIRUT COURSE

The Advanced Course of Mastology of June 2011 was planed and executed by a local organizing committee headed by Professor Maroun Aboujaoudé, under the supervision of the course director Prof Négib Geahchan. The local committee was equally in charge of the 14th Spring Lebanese Congress of Surgery that took place in Beirut on the 10th and 11th of june 2011. This meeting is the official annual conference of the Lebanese Society for General Surgery presided by Professor Négib Geahchan. This meant that the MANOSMED course profited from the exhibition events and economic resources of the surgical conference and was covered financially by the Lebanese Society for General Surgery. The Lebanese Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology was also invited to join the organizing committee and the course.

Patchwork Events helped in organization this course. Mrs Mireille Geahchan was in charge of the accommodation and social program, and supervised the conference book. 

DATE AND VENUE OF THE COURSE

The Advanced Course of Mastology took place in the Lebanese Order of physicians premises, located in the capital Beirut. It extended on three days (8th to 10th June 2011), and included an official ceremony on the 9th of June and a final exam on the 10th of June.

OFFICIAL CEREMONY

It took place on the 9th of June at 7 pm. It included:

1.      Official speeches given by

a.       the course director, president of the Lebanese Society for general Surgery, professor Négib Geahchan

b.      the head of the organizing committee, professor Maroun Aboujaoudé

c.       the president of MANOSMED, professor Stéphanos Zervoudis, who presented on PowerPoint the Mastology Association of Northern and Southern Mediterranean

d.      the president of the Lebanese order of physicians, professor Charaf Aboucharaf

2.      an Educational session on breast cancer prevention, including a lecture on cancer development and prevention, and testimonies of the Lion’s Club and Roche company that organized two prevention and screening campaigns in Lebanon, during the last three years

3.      a guitar concert offered by the Uruguayan embassy in Lebanon

4.      a cocktail diner offered by the Lebanese Society for General Surgery 

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM OF THE COURSE

The official headline of the MANOSMED Course 2011 of Beirut, chosen by the Executive Committee of MANSOMED, was “Benign and Pre-invasive Diseases of the Breast”. This general topic was exhaustively covered by the 3-day sessions and lectures.

The course included 12 educational sessions, of 90 to 120 minutes each. The topics of these sessions were as follow:

Ø  Breast anatomical considerations

Ø  Breast physiological considerations

Ø  Benign diseases of the breast: Pathological and Clinical Considerations (Part A)

Ø  Benign diseases of the breast: Pathological and Clinical Considerations (Part B)

Ø  Pathology interactive workshop

Ø  Pre-invasive lesions and diseases

Ø  High-risk patients for cancer

Ø  Imaging of the breast: Clinico-radiological considerations (Part A)

Ø  Imaging of the breast: Clinico-radiological considerations (Part B)

Ø  Radiology interactive workshop

Ø  Treatment of benign and pre-invasive lesions

Ø  Plastic and reconstructive surgery

The number of lectures was 61. They were covered by Lebanese university professors and invited members of MANOSMED.

The abstracts of 57 lectures have been published in the Conference Book, and will be, very soon, published also on the website of the Lebanese Society for General Surgery www.slcg.org and hopefully on the official site of MANOSMED.

FINAL EXAM

A final interactive exam, made of 90 Multiple Choice Questions, was planed at the end of the course. It was passed in 120 minutes, in an interactive way using an individual voting system. The grades were immediately published at the end of the exam. Professor Georges Iatrakis was the president of the jury, and signed the diploma, all the way with the president of MANOSMED professor Stéphanos Zervoudis and the course director professor Négib Geahchan.

34 candidates registered to the course. The following 22 candidates passed the final exam and received the diploma:


o   Dimitrios BARBARAS

o   Maroun SFEIR

o   Maroun ABOUJAOUDE

o   Antoine YOUNAN

o   Jihad AWAD

o   Naji YOUNES

o   Walid AMBRISS

o   Bassam GHAZI

o   Jeannette YOUSSEF

o   Ghassan AWAR

o   Joelle SAFI

o   Nasser ABI-GHANEM

o   Youssef BADRA

o   Ali CHALHOUB

o   Joseph HADCHITI

o   Bahjat BAHJAT

o   Riad ZAGHLOUL

o   Georges ABIZEID

o   Joseph AZAR

o   Jamil HALABY

o   Wassim  ABI-HUSSEIN

o   Nasser HABIB


 

The passing grade was 60 / 100.

 

 

 

LECTURERS

31 Lebanese physicians and scientists, all of academic background, participated as lecturers in MANOSMED course 2011. Each one gave one lecture, except Négib Geahchan, Georges Aftimos and Michel Ghossain, who lectured two times each. The Lebanese speakers were:


o   Siham FLEYFEL

o   Saad BIZRI

o   Viviane SMAYRA

o   Faysal ELKAK

o   Adnan MROUEH

o   Rana SKAFF

o   Georges HILAL

o   Sahar ELRASSI-ZANKOUL

o   Khaled HABIB

o   Maguy CHERFANE ABOU-HAMAD

o   Patricia HASWANI-SALIBA

o   Saad KHAIRALLAH

o   Négib GEAHCHAN

o   Michel SAADE

o   Fady ABBAS

o   Georges KEHDY

o   Nagi ATALLAH

o   Michel GHOSSAIN

o   Youssef EL-ZEIN

o   Ghina BERJAWI

o   Christine SALEM

o   Sami FADDOUL

o   Joe KHOURY

o   Michel DAHER

o   Elie NASR

o   Georges AFTIMOS

o   Tark HUSSAMI

o   Ramzi MAAMARI

o   Béchara ATTIEH

o   Hassan KANSO

o   Marie-Laurence CHAMOUN


 

All MANOSMED members were invited, since January 2011, to participate to this course in Lebanon. The majority didn’t reply to this call. Some of them apologized for being unable to participate because of other commitments on the same dates. Eighteen MANOSMED members replied and were asked to choose two subjects, each, from the list of topics decided by the course director and the local committee, and approved by the president of MANOSMED. From these eighteen MANOSMED members supposed to come to Lebanon, on the decided date, the following speakers didn’t show:

1.      Fabrice LECURU who didn’t send any excuse and didn’t answer all our calls and mails

2.      Carlos LOPES for whom a delegate of Patchwork events was waiting at the airport with a taxi sent a mail saying that he had suffered, one week previously, from an accident forbidding him from coming to Lebanon

3.      Helidon NINA who discovered, at the last moment, that he didn’t have a visa

4.      Mohamed HALBOUNI who didn’t send any excuse and didn’t reply to our final calls

Finally, 14 MANOSMED members participated actively to the course.

o   Stéphanos ZERVOUDIS

o   Niki AGNANTIS

o   Georges IATRAKIS

o   Hassan JADID

o   Stefan VOICULESCU

o   Chafic CHRAIBI

o   Taha ALLAWATI

o   Sherif OMAR

o   Azza SALEM

o   Monica CASTIGLIONI

o   Radhi HAMZA

o   Georges VLASTOS

o   Omar OMAR

o   Tamer YOUSSEF

However, some of them didn’t send the abstracts of their lectures and didn’t propose questions for the final exam.

All the Lebanese and MANOSMED lecturers will receive a certificate of participation.

 

OFFICIAL MEETING OF MANOSMED MEMBERS

MANOSMED held a meeting on Wednesday the 8th of June. It was chaired by Professor Stéphanos  Zervoudis. All MANOSMED members attended this meeting, as well as the members of the Lebanon Chapter of MANOSMED. The meeting discussed the successes and pitfalls of the Beirut course, and thanked the organizers for the great job they did. The meeting addressed also the subject of the next course in Marrakech, and discussed the program and the logistics of this course. They asked Dr Chafic CHRAIBI to stick to the model of the Lebanese course and to be very rigorous in the organization agenda of the meeting.

The MANOSMED meeting decided also to publish a book on Benign and Pre-invasive Diseases of the Breast, to be edited by MANOSMED. This book will include the lectures given in the Lebanese course. The editing committee will include professors Niki Agnantis, Georges Aftimos and Michel Ghossain, and will be chaired by professor Négib Geahchan.

Professor Geahchan presented to the meeting the Lebanon Chapter of MANOSMED and proposed that professors Michel Ghossain and Elie Nasr become members of MANOSMED international group. These two candidates were asked, then, to send their curriculum vitae and letters of candidature to the official meeting of Morocco.

The members of MANOSMED decided also to encourage the establishment of national chapters, similar to the Lebanon chapter, that will serve the vision and objectives of MANOSMED, and will help in the organization of the semestrial courses of mastology.

 

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

MANOSMED foreign members were accommodated in Monroe Hotel, a five-star hotel of the Beirut downtown. A welcome diner took place in El-Balad restaurant, Place de l’Etoile, Beirut downtown on Wednesday evening.

All MANOSMED lecturers were invited to the gala dinner of the conference, on Friday evening, the 10th of June 2011. It took place in Orientis Restaurant at Antelias city, in the suburbs of Beirut. A souvenir plate was presented to all invited participants.

 

 

In conclusion, I think that the Advanced Course of Mastology, Beirut 2011, was a real success. I address my deep thanks and those of all the organizing committee to the president of MANOSMED, its executive committee and all the members who accepted our invitation and replied to our call. They did, in Beirut, a great job, and this meeting will be everlasting in our collective memory and in MANOSMED history.

  

Negib E. GEAHCHAN

Course director

MANOSMED COURSE LEBANON 2011

Professor of Surgical Oncology

Faculty of Medicine, Saint Joseph University

Beirut - LEBANON

Phone - 961 3 844674

e-mail : manosmedlebanon@gmail.com