BAPRAS Celtic Meeting Summary

Many younger colleagues may never have heard of the ’Scottish/ Irish Meeting' but it was / is one of the oldest meetings on the Plastic Surgery calendar. It later became known as the Scottish meeting but this year for the first time ever was officially hosted and organised by BAPRAS. The meeting has for the last 5 or so years been held in Dunkeld in a beautiful highland setting on the banks of the river Tay. We have in the past been blessed with many fantastic international speakers e.g. Danial Kalbermaten and Fransisco Brava and this year we were particularly honoured to be educated by London's own Paul Harris.


The 2018 meeting organised by BAPRAS has been shamelessly re-branded as the "Celtic" meeting. We were delighted therefore to welcome many colleagues from the islands of Ireland, Wales (they wish) and England (they wish even more). The meeting as well as its scientific merit is one of the most convivial and sociable on the calendar with a captive Thursday evening dinner and occasional highland malt thereafter. The hotel is also surrounded by fantastic outdoor opportunities such as mountain biking, hill-walking, shooting and fishing. Many colleagues extend their stay over the weekend and bring their families.

We were also delighted this year to make the inaugural award for the best paper in the name of Antony Watson our recently departed and much-loved colleague. For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing Tony he was in so many ways the perfect gentleman and the perfect colleague. A distinguished Cleft Surgeon he was also first to establish ear reconstruction in Edinburgh during the Thalidomide tragedy. Tony was variously president of the BAPS, chairman of the SAC in plastic Surgery and treasurer of the Edinburgh college. He loved to travel internationally and included Drs Millard, Tanzer, Thatte and Emmett amongst his friends. Tony had a relatively long and happy retirement in the beautiful borders town of Melrose where he and Ann lived in the prefect idyll on the banks of the Tweed. He died peacefully surrounded by family from a curiously non-PSA declared prostate cancer. If you are interested in reading Tony's own reflections on his time in Plastic Surgery, they will soon be made available in the BAPRAS members section of the website.

The first Tony Watson prize was kindly awarded by Ann jointly to Chris West and Sadaf Sohrabi for their joint papers on cellular molecular characteristics in Dupuytren’s, keloid scars and hypertrophic scars.

So, if you are looking for an excuse to visit the Highlands, come and raise a glass to Tony next year at the 2019 Celtic meeting in Dunkeld. Details will follow in due course.