Craniofacial Surgery

This week i was lucky enough to be able to attend a lecture on craniofacial surgery at my college. As i will be applying for medicine later this year and inevitably the question of my speciality will come up i have been trying to increase my awareness in all the different fields in medicine so as to be able to make a better (i have already posted a post on endocrinology before!)

So what is craniofacial surgery? Craniofacial surgery is a surgical speciality of plastic surgery dealing with deformities of the skull, face and jaws. It often involves movement of bone and tissue however surgery does not involve the brain or eye. Defects typically include; 

• craniosynostoses; whereby the bone in an infants skull fuses together prematurely which causes the brain to not develop properly. Since the brain continues to grow until a considerable time later the early fusing causes a constricted space in the skull which causes the brain to not develop fully
• Crouzon syndrome; which is a genetic disorder affecting the first bronchial arch causing development problems in growing embryos disturbing their development causing lasting and widespread effects
• Encephalocele; which is a neural tube defect characterized by sac like protrusions of the brain cause by failure of the neural tube to close completely during fetal development causing a groove down the middle of the skull
• Craniofacial Cleft; an opening or malformation on the face due to rare congenital anomalies

And what does craniofacial surgery involve? Craniofacial principles involve wide surgical exposure, primary bone grafting and internal fixation, which are applied to the management of complex craniofacial trauma with the management of craniofacial patients requiring a collabrative and multi disciplinary approach to achieve optimal results. The core disciplines include maxillofacial, plastic and neurosurgery, supported by anaesthesia, ENT, ophthalmic and pecialist nursing. It consists of a 1 year surgical fellowship completed after a residency in either plastic surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery or otolaryngology.