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The Regional Burns and Paediatric Plastic Surgery Service at Alder Hey provides a service to the whole of Merseyside and Cheshire as well as North Wales and the Isle of Man.
Plastic surgery involves the management and correction of congenital and acquired conditions that lead to visible difference or functional compromise. The term plastic surgery comes from the Greek work “plastikos” meaning ‘to mould’ – referring to the surgical ‘remoulding’ of physical differences.
One of the most common reasons children attend the department is because of an injury and our trauma service is one of the busiest in the country.
Another common reason is due to a congenital difference that may lead to difficulty with some activities or a visible disfigurement. Sensitively managed with our team approach, we aim to help a child to overcome the obstacles they may face.
We provide a general plastic surgery service to treat conditions like moles, cysts and birthmarks, correction of prominent ears and tongue-tie.
Plastic surgeons also manage soft tissue injuries from trauma - like burns, lacerations, crushed fingertips, hand fractures and dog bites, and also work on more complex cased like reattaching amputated limbs or facial reconstruction.
We offer an upper limb service, dealing with everything from extra digits to complex hand restructions, and a craniofacial service. We also have a burns service, facial palsy service and treat vascular anomalies. You can read more about these in the tabs below.
Our early bird clinics cut waiting times for plastic surgery treatment and help children and parents spend less time spent in hospital – on average now, just half a day.
As well as families having to spend much less time in hospital, the new system means young patients can prepare for surgery by fasting in their own home and then return home much sooner after their operation.
We treat all levels of burn injury in children, including those severely injured who need intensive care.
The burns multidisciplinary team comprises experienced nurses, two consultant burns surgeons, an Associate Specialist surgeon, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dietitian, psychologists, intensivist, anaesthetist, audit assistant and burn research nurse.
In addition to a burns outpatient service, we also have a scar management clinic, a pressure garment service and a multidisciplinary scar reconstructive clinic.
We also offer a burns support club which provides extra-curricular activities in holiday times.
Facial palsy is a weakness in the muscles of the face. This is most commonly caused by damage to the facial nerve that provides the nerve supply to the fine muscles that are responsible for facial movement. This results in an inability to perform normal facial expressions.
This palsy can be due to damage to the nerve at any point along its course from the brain through the skull and in the face where it forms five main branches. The palsy can be complete (a total loss of function) or partial (a weakness rather than complete loss of movement) affecting all divisions of the nerve or only specific branches. As a result, there is great variability in the way that children with facial palsy are affected.
There is a great deal of information on the Facial Palsy UK website and we recommend you spend some time exploring it; here we outline the impact facial palsy can have and some of the numerous causes.
In many cases, a child is born with facial palsy and no specific cause is found. It won’t be anything that has been done by you during pregnancy and is likely a spontaneous event during development. In some cases it occurs with other features that define a recognisable syndrome. Such cases are very rare.
Facial palsy can be acquired through trauma (such as skull fractures and facial lacerations) or as a consequence of tumours that occur anywhere along the path of the nerve from the brain to the face. The most common cause of a facial palsy (usually temporary) is during childbirth, especially if forceps are used. Bell Palsy is less common in children than in adults but in both instances, we know that prompt treatment with steroids can result in a good outcome.
In adults, facial palsy has significant functional impact. In other words, the function of the eyes, nose and mouth are impaired causing symptoms such as red and irritated eyes, blocked nose and inability to keep food and liquid in the mouth. Such problems in children are less common as the functional problems above are partly due to sagging of the tissues of the face, which happens as we age. Therefore the main issues that affect children are psychological as a consequence of their facial and smile asymmetry.
Very young children are oblivious to the condition until they start to interact with their peers. Typically at nursery or primary school age the child will notice the difference in their smile. Sometimes other children will enquire or the parents will ask questions “at the school gates”. Around the age of 3-5 years, the child may ask why their own smile is different from others. In older children, especially if there is a change of peer group it may become a focus of bullying. The single most important factor in a child’s reaction to their difference is the parental reaction to their difference. Parents that show concern about their child’s facial difference project their anxieties onto the child who then develops a negative self-perception.
A multidisciplinary team (MDT) is widely recognised as the best way to manage patients that have complex problems that impact on many areas of their health. It comprises a team of individuals each with their own expertise that have a common strategy for treatment of a particular condition. As children do not like sitting in a room being stared at by many strangers we have adopted a “virtual MDT” approach whereby an initial consultation will be with one of the team members and subsequent consultations will be coordinated with those professionals needed to address specific issues.
We believe the MDT will advance the care of our patients by using a standardised approach with robust data collection and outcomes studies to allow us to evaluate patient experience and maintain standards to an international level.
Physiotherapy: Helen Hartley and Rebecca Pratt are our therapists that employ a range of techniques to treat some of the symptoms of facial palsy such a facial spasm as synkinesis as well as having a key role in post-operative rehabilitation following smile reconstruction.
Psychology: Rachel Mumford and her team provide psychological support to those children and families that experience difficulties coping with facial palsy.
Speech and Language Therapy: Wendy Blumenow is also a member of the craniofacial service and provides speech therapy to the small number of patients that have issues in this area.
Neurology: Dr Ram Kumar and Dr Stefan Spinty are the neurologists on the team who is involved in diagnosis and treatment of facial palsy. Dr Kumar graduated in medicine at University of Cambridge in 1995. He has been a consultant paediatric neurologist at Alder Hey since 2007. Dr Kumar has contributed chapters to a number of textbooks and is actively engaged in research, undergraduate and postgraduate multiprofessional education.
Neurosurgery: Mr Conor Malluci is our neurosurgeon that has a practice in brain tumours; some patients will experience a facial palsy following tumour removal and Mr Malluci is our link for children that present with facial palsy that is found to be due to a tumour. He has just finished his tenure as chairman of the British Paediatric Neurosurgery Group and continues to chair their research group. He is currently deputy editor of the British Journal of Neurosurgery and the associate editor of the European journal, “Child’s Nervous System”.
Ear Nose and Throat: Mr Ravi Sharma is our ENT surgeon.
Plastic surgery: We have a dedicated ward for our facial palsy patients with individual cubicles and en suite facilities for families. Mr Adel Y Fattah is the lead for the facial palsy service having trained in Toronto with Dr Ron Zuker. Maria Kelly is our specialist nurse and is responsible for liaising between specialties in order to coordinate appointments.
Theatre Team: We have a dedicated core group of theatre staff that perform our facial reanimation and microsurgery cases.
A very common form of smile asymmetry is mandibular division palsy leading to “asymmetric crying facies”. This is so called as it is often first noted in babies when they cry. It is caused by depressor anguli oris muscle (DAO) weakness, as a consequence of palsy of the mandibular division that innervates this muscle. A number of options exist to treat this including surgery to use a muscle in the neck to recreate the muscle action (digastric transfer) or more commonly procedures to weaken the normal muscle on the unaffected side. The latter doesn’t treat the problem, but does restore symmetry, which is the noticeable feature. One method of doing this is to perform an operation via an incision inside the mouth and remove a portion of the muscle. This is permanent and once performed cannot be easily reversed. Our preferred method is to use botox to temporarily weaken the muscles. The aim of this is to weaken the DAO muscle to the same extent as on the affected side. As it is not permanent, repeated injections are required two or three times a year.
The injection is painlessly performed in the clinic (or under sedation) using an ultra-fine needle. It takes a few seconds to perform the treatment then you are able to go home. It takes 2-3 days for any improvement to be seen. The effect should last for about three to six months but everyone is different. An example is seen below. In general, the age at which it is performed is determined by the child actively seeking treatment, usually around the age of nine and above.
We offer a full range of surgeries to restore facial animation. The most common procedures we use for established (long term) facial palsy are described below. In many cases, the options for treatment include doing nothing which is a good option if you are unsure about treatment as leaving things as they are will not usually have any effect on the condition or necessarily worsen it. Many procedures are tailored to the individual needs of the patient. For example, recent injury to the facial nerve on one side may be amenable to a cross face nerve graft where we can run a nerve graft from one side of the face to the other to restore muscle function using carefully hidden incisions.
For established (long term) facial palsy in which the muscles of the face do not work and the child is seeking solutions to recreate a smile we offer three main procedures outlined below.
Widely regarded as the Gold Standard for treatment, is the use of a “free muscle transfer” which can be a one or two stage operation. The two-stage operation involves a first stage termed a cross face nerve graft that uses a nerve from the back of the calf to take the activity of the normal facial nerve on the unaffected side to the affected side. This first operation involves a one to three-night stay in hospital and most importantly will have no effect on the smile. Using two small transverse incisions in the back of the calf of the leg, the “sural” nerve is identified and removed. This nerve supplies some sensation to the outer border of the foot and its removal will result in some loss of sensation; most patients do not report this to be a problem. Meanwhile on the unaffected side of the face, a facelift incision running from the hair, immediately in front of the ear and curving behind the ear and partly onto the neck is made and the skin is lifted up to expose the branches of the facial nerve. The nerve has many branches like that of a tree and a special instrument is used to test each of the branches to find a branch that creates a strong smile. Once that branch is found, it is cut and the nerve graft from the calf is sutured to it using microsurgery. Other branches that remain will preserve the smile to that side of the face. The graft is then threaded through to the other side of the face by tunnelling under the skin via a small incision inside the upper lip so that there are no other scars on the face.
After the operation, we wait 6-12 months for the nerve fibres to grow from the unaffected side of the face down the nerve graft to the affected side. We can often test for this growth by tapping over the course of the nerve, which will create a tingling sensation. During this waiting phase the patient may feel unusual sensations or tingling which is a good sign showing that the nerve is growing; it usually grows around 1mm per day. It is important to remember that there will be no restoration of smile after this first stage.
The second stage operation involves taking part of the gracilis muscle from the inside of the thigh and transferring it up to the affected side of the face so that it can power a smile. The patient will spend roughly a week in hospital after this procedure.
The muscle is usually taken from the opposite side using an incision down the inside of the upper thigh, which is usually well hidden. Part of the muscle is used and together with the nerve that activates it and the blood vessels that keep it alive, it is transferred to the face. The affected side of the face is opened in the same way as the first operation and the muscle is attached to the inside of the lips using stitches. Using microsurgery, the blood supply to the muscle is restored by putting the artery and vein together and finally the nerve is sutured to the nerve graft that was placed in the first operation using the incision in the mouth.
After the operation we need to wait 6-12 weeks for the nerve to grow down to the muscle before we start to see any movement. Initially, the movements are small and weak but with a programme of physiotherapy and exercises in the mirror the muscle will get stronger over a number of months.
The one-stage version of the operation does not use the facial nerve of the other side but uses a nerve that creates a biting action (“the motor nerve to masseter muscle”). Essentially, this version is the second stage operation only where the electrical input to the muscle is from the nerve to the biting muscle instead.
The main difference between the two operations is that in the one stage operation the patient will need to consciously bite to smile, whereas in the two-stage operation the smile will be spontaneously activated whenever the nerve on the other side works. The one-stage operation has achieved good results and many have found that the brain “re-wires” itself so that a conscious need to bite eventually goes and the smile may even be spontaneous. The other difference is that the biting muscle will create a stronger smile and so for some children that have a particularly strong smile, this may be the better option.
Another option to restore smile is a single stage procedure that also uses one of the biting muscles and doesn’t require any microsurgery. This is called the Labbé procedure after the French surgeon that described it. In the temple when you bite you’ll feel a muscle contract called temporalis.This is attached to the jawbone just in front of the ear with a strong tendon.
The Labbé procedure involves a scar across the top of the head inside the hair to expose this muscle. The muscle is then freed from the skull and allowed to slide down toward the face. Then using an incision inside the mouth the tendon is freed up from the jawbone and re-routed to the corner of the mouth. When the patient bites, the muscle will create a smile.
Whatever the technique, all are limited by the fact that we are using a single muscle to pull in one direction that best mimics the natural facial muscles that are small and can pull in a multitude of different ways to create subtle facial expression. The techniques above are unable to create such subtle movements but are able to create a smile that will be relatively symmetrical to the other side.
Our group is actively engaged in research and are currently investigating the 3D anatomy of the face using 3D photographs of the normal population to define what constitutes a normal smile as part of our SmileSpace project.
Development of the Face-Q Kids, a patient reported outcome measure for facial palsy (as part of an international collaboration with the creators of the Face-Q, Breast-Q and Cleft-Q).
We are nationally designated to provide facial palsy care to children across England up to the age of 18 and beyond. We take all referrals related to facial palsy or suspected facial palsy; we are here to help you diagnose and treat your patients optimally. Please feel free to contact us for advice. Our main domains are:
Syndromic Cases: We will see all patients that have facial palsy as part of a syndrome and are developing our Moebius Syndrome service.
Obstetric facial palsy: We will see all cases of facial palsy following difficult birth in order to reassure and document rate of recovery.
Acute facial trauma: we will see facial nerve injury following trauma including skull base trauma. Lacerations to the face seen before 72 hours have much better outcomes in terms of our ability to match up nerve ends using intra-operative neurostimulation.
Planning and counselling prior to oncologic resection: We can counsel patients on what to expect should facial nerve injury follow oncologic resection and communicate with oncologic surgeons to coordinate immediate reconstruction if appropriate.
Established facial palsy: we will see all cases and consider suitability for smile reconstruction and facial reanimation, as well as treating issues such as synkinesis and facial spasm.
Work up: In general, no specific investigations need to be performed prior to referral but any results to date are very helpful when included with the referral letter.
For further information email facialpalsy@alderhey.nhs.uk or call 0151 252 5386. We want to make your experience of using our service as easy as possible.
How to refer
Referrals will be accepted via the Regional Paediatric Burns and Plastic Surgery Service and the Choose and Book system.
Email: facialpalsy@alderhey.nhs.uk
Fax: 0151 252 5932
Choose and Book: Please search under Alder Hey Plastic Surgery
Address:
Facial Nerve Programme Regional Paediatric Burns and Plastic Surgery Service Alder Hey NHS Children’s Foundation Trust Eaton Road Liverpool L12 2AP
A common cause of birthmarks in children is the abnormal development of arteries, veins and lymphatics. These birthmarks vary considerably in appearance, functional effects and prognosis. Treatment of these abnormalities is extremely important for the child and the family for both cosmetic and functional reasons, and varies according to the type and location of the lesion.
We run a weekly general clinic, and a monthly multidisciplinary clinic. We treat all types of vascular anomalies, and offer a wide range of laser treatments for various conditions:
This page only gives general information and you should not rely on this alone for information about treatment. You must always discuss the individual treatment of your child with the appropriate member of staff.
We do not know why some children are born with congenital pigmented naevi. This is essentially a ‘mole’ which can vary in colour from very light brown to almost black, and size, from very small to large – covering extensive areas of the body.
Does congenital pigmented naevus need treatment?
No, most are innocent. However, treatment may be desirable to improve the cosmetic appearance.
What treatment options are available?
Laser treatment-this aims to lighten the colour of the naevus. Some patients respond better than the others, and several treatments are usually needed. Laser treatment, however, will not eliminate the naevus completely. Even if good result is achieved after several treatments, the colour will return if the area is exposed to sunlight.
Surgery-various options exist depending on the size of the naevus, and its location. This will be discussed with you in the clinic.
What is laser treatment?
Laser treatment for pigmented birthmark involves a specific light source that targets the abnormal pigmentation in the skin. It aims to lighten the colour of the birhtmark. Usually 2-3 treatments are given at 6 weekly interval. Further laser treatment could be given if the result is favourable.
Will my child require an anaesthetic?
What are the side effects of laser treatment?
There can often be some scabbing, bruising and swelling In the area that has been treated but this will normally clear up within five days.
What is the after care?
When you go home the area may be swollen and scabbed for a few days,you will need to keep the area clean and dry. If the areas start oozing or become smelly you will need to contact the Laser Unit.
A haemangioma is a collection of abnormal blood vessels. It is not usually present at birth, but appears as a small red mark at about 2 weeks of age. It grows during the first few months of life, where its size becomes bigger, and colour becomes redder.
The growth phase normally stops when a child is about 9 months old. Thereafter, it gradually reduces in size and colour.
Will my child need treatment?
Since haemangioma reduces in size and colour at its own accord, treatment is usually not needed. However, in certain circumstances, when its growth is very rapid, or if it is interfering with normal functions e.g. blocking the vision, or causing difficulty in breathing, urgent treatment is needed. Treatment is also given when haemangioma bleeds.
The resolution of haemangioma can take many years, and sometimes the resolution may not be complete. We will monitor your child regularly in our clinics, and if it does not resolve completely by school age (4 years old), we will intervene to ensure that your child does not attend school with obvious disfigurement. Early, unnecessary treatment (e.g. surgery) may result in unwanted scars.
Treatment of haemangioma depends on whether its undertaken to halt its growth (i.e. when your child is very young), or to address the cosmetic effect of haemangioma (i.e. before your child goes to school).
Early treatment to halt the growth of a haemangioma involves:
Late treatment if a haemangioma does not completely disappear by school age:
Each of these treatment options will be explained to you in the clinic. A treatment plan will be discussed to ensure that your child achieves the best treatment result.
The cause of port wine stain (capillary malformation) is unknown. it is made up of a collection of abnormal blood vessels in the skin.
What are the treatment options?
Laser treatment is the treatment of choice for port wine stain.
Cosmetic camouflage can be useful on the face. However, it may not be practical to apply it in younger children, and on certain body areas where it can smear the clothing.
Surgery is not an option in the treatment of port wine stain.
What will happen if the port wine stain is not treated?
If not treated it is possible that, in adulthood, the port wine stain could become darker and thicker.
When would treatment start?
We would start treatment from one year old. There is evidence that treatment is more successful in younger children as their blood vessels are smaller.
Laser treatment for port wine stain involves a specific light source that targets the abnormal blood vessels in the skin. The light source heats up the abnormal blood vessels, causing them to coagulate and stop further blood flow in the area. Laser treatment aims to lighten the colour of the port wine stain. Usually treatment is given at 6 weekly interval. On average, 6-8 treatments are needed to achieve the optimum results.
How successful is laser treatment?
Each child responds differently to laser treatment. After laser treatment, there is usually lightening of the colour of the port wine stain. The end results varies between children, and on different parts of body. In general, port wine on the face responds better than those on the limbs.
This treatment can only be carried out at six weekly intervals in order to allow the skin to recover.
Will my child need an anaesthetic?
In younger children, laser treatment is generally carried out under general anaesthesia.
In older children, treatment may be possible under local anaesthesia (a numbing cream is applied to the port wine stain prior to treatment), or with entonox (pain killing gas that the child breathes). The suitability of each treatment will be tailored to the age and maturity of your child.
Immediately after treatment, the treated area will bruise, and has a blue black colour. This takes about 7-10 days to resolve. There is a small risk of scarring to the treated area.
What is the aftercare after laser treatment?
You will need to keep the area clean and dry. If the areas become red and swollen you will need to contact us. The area is usually not very painful after treatment. Simple analgesia i.e. paracetamol could be given if necessary.
Alder Hey Children's Charity
