Children with facial deformities: plastic surgery for kids

Craniofacial plastic surgeons treat a very wide range of conditions in children such as complex facial clefts, abnormalities of skull growth, and a complex range of facial deformities and childhood facial tumours. Throughout the world children with facial disfigurement find themselves excluded from normal interaction in society. Similar conditions are seen in children everywhere in the world but in developed countries, like the UK, children have access to the treatment that they need.

The charity Facing The World was set up in 2002 so that children with severe facial disfigurement living in countries where they cannot receive help due to lack of training, resources or infrastructure can have access to the quality treatment that they need.

The occurrence of severe facial birth defects is ten times higher in Vietnam than in neighbouring countries and the charity has been sending medical training missions to Da Nang and Hanoi in Vietnam for the past nine years to establish craniofacial centres. These missions consist of teams of expert craniofacial surgeons all of whom donate their time, as do all the Vietnamese doctors.

In May 2017, Mr Kirkpatrick was part of the team in Hanoi treating a 6-year-old girl born with abnormal skull growth and part of her brain dropping down into her face. Her eye sockets were very wide apart and at different heights so that her eyes looked in different directions. It took ten hours to reshape her skull and to move her brain and eye sockets to the normal, correct position. Now she should be able to grow up without the difficulties that a child with severe facial deformity faces in society.
 

More about Facing the World

The international charity is also involved in a training program, working with specialist medical teams in Danang General Hospital in Vietnam. Why Vietnam? The country has the highest incidence of congenital birth defects in the world. These are thought to be due to the use of genotoxic dioxone compounds during the Vietnam War in the 1970s.

The charity also supports surgeons and other medical staff to come to the UK for training. For the past nine years, the UK team has been travelling to Danang General Hospital and Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi to provide local training and to also treat patients who are not able to be transferred to the UK for medical care. The aim is to provide the training and support necessary to establish a craniofacial unit at the hospital in Danang. This enables the medical teams there to provide specialist treatment for the children and adults of Vietnam who have severe facial deformity and disfigurement. Within the next five years, the charity aims to establish a series of craniofacial centres in Vietnam, sponsor training missions to hospitals across Vietnam and to train 60 doctors. It is estimated that 18,000 life-changing operations will be performed.