Patrick Tonnard

Patrick Tonnard is a Belgian plastic surgeon practicing in the city of Ghent. In cooperation with Alexis Verpaele, he developed the Minimal Access Cranial Suspension (MACS) facelift, published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 2002. Later authors have referred to the procedure as the "Tonnard and Verpaele technique." The same journal published his team's description of nanofat grafting in 2013, a paper later cited as the introduction of the technique by systematic reviews in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Career Tonnard graduated cum laude in medicine from Ghent University in 1987 and went on to train in general and plastic surgery in Ghent and Bordeaux. He has been a consultant plastic surgeon at AZ Sint-Lucas Hospital in Ghent since 1994. In 2007, they opened a second clinic in Sint-Martens-Latem called the Esthetic Medical Center II (referred to as E:MC2).

Surgical techniques

The MACS-lift is a short-scar rhytidectomy carried out through an inverted L-shaped pre-auricular incision. Two permanent purse-string sutures anchored in the deep temporal fascia pull the sagging soft tissues of the face vertically upwards, and the operation can be done under local anaesthesia. A 2024 systematic review in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery assessed twelve clinical studies on the procedure and reported improvements in scar treatment and skin quality, while warning that most of the included studies were of low level of evidence. and Regenerative Facial Surgery (Quality Medical Publishing, 2022). He has also written two Dutch-language books for a general audience: Schone Schijn with the journalist Laurens De Keyser (Van Halewyck, 2000) and Verliefd op het tweede gezicht with Verpaele (Houtekiet, 2009).

Humanitarian work

In 2006, Tonnard and Verpaele co-founded See & Smile, a Flemish non-profit that brings over plastic surgeons and ophthalmologists for surgical missions in Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia. The plastic surgeons are designated to treat cleft lip and cleft palate, while the partner ophthalmologists perform cataract surgery.