Refine your skills and knowledge in 2022 with these top-quality, hands-on courses currently in demand

Embarking on a career in the surgical field means embracing a path of continuous learning and development. With each course and webinar, you get new opportunity to learn, to discuss your ideas with experts in the field, to share knowledge, and challenge your own convictions. AO CMF’s Lighthouse courses bring together all of this—and more—as demonstrated by the success of this year’s course offering.

While online education has become more accessible due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there is a high demand for face-to-face, on-site courses offering practical exercises on human anatomical specimens. AO CMF is redefining surgical education with its the gold-standard Lighthouse courses focusing on what matters most: maximum time in the operating room doing what you love while working alongside globally renowned experts in the field.

A success story that keeps expanding

Launched in 2019, the AO CMF Lighthouse courses’ educational concept has proven highly successful and is highly regarded, with an ever-expanding range of topics, including orthognathic surgery, facial trauma, aesthetic surgery, and more.

The concept works, as proven by the courses’ long waiting lists for registration. The emerging generation of young surgeons is looking for intensive courses with practical exercises in the wet lab, lively debates, and informal discussions with leading faculty.

The two 2021 Lighthouse events—the AO CMF Lighthouse Course—Surgical Approaches and Techniques in Facial Surgery and the AO CMF Lighthouse Course—Reconstructive Surgery in the Head and Neck with Flap Harvesting—sold out quickly and seats had to be added to the long waiting lists of participants.

A strong foundation for a long career

Master craniomaxillofacial surgeons Stefano Fusetti and Max Heiland are eager to bring the Lighthouse concept to new groups of learners in 2022.

Fusetti, who is the Chair of the craniomaxillofacial department at the University of Padua Medical School, says Padua, Italy, is the perfect venue for the AO CMF Lighthouse Course—Surgical Approaches and Techniques in Facial Surgery (with human anatomical specimens) in May 2022.

“Padua, with the world’s oldest anatomy theater, is the home of modern medicine. We will be teaching surgical approaches in the city where modern anatomy was born back in 1594,” he explains. “This course is a natural next step after medical school for young surgeons because it will give them an opportunity to learn the surgical approaches and practice techniques that will help them establish a strong foundation that will serve them well throughout their surgical careers.” The city of Padova also offers the opportunity to the surgeons to visit some of the most relevant sites in the history of medicine

Refining an already successful concept

Heiland, chairperson of the AO CMF Lighthouse Course—Reconstructive Surgery in the Head and Neck with Flap Harvesting and chairperson of the AO CMF European and Southern African Board—says the Lighthouse concept is popular with the participants. Launched in 2019 in Madrid, Spain, the course has found a new home in 2021 at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, where Heiland is medical management director in the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery.

“We have worked hard to improve participants’ experience since this course began in 2019. The faculty team has further refined the concept and the course today is an extraordinary learning experience,” Heiland explains. “In 2022, participants will have two intense days in the lab, additional practical exercises, informal discussions with our faculty, and review various approaches to the same surgical procedures.”

Those discussions deliver exceptional value, he says.

“The interesting aspect of this course is that—in addition to learning how to treat specific conditions, participants can hear individual faculty members explain how they approach differently the situation,” Heiland says. “That’s important because there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution—every surgeon has his or her own way of dealing with the pathology or other issue at hand. Hearing different sides of each story is what gives this course its edge—especially in light of the fact that our Lighthouse faculty are among the world’s best reconstructive surgeons.”