What is the North Thames Cleft Centre?
Staff List | Contact Us | Research and Recent Publications | Meet the team | Diagnosis | Hospital admissions | Care pathway |
Cleft Lip repair | Cleft Palate repair | Speech and Language Therapy | Hearing | Orthodontics | General anaesthetic | Clinical review | Outpatients | Information for Health Professionals
This is a joint service run by Great Ormond Street Hospital and the St Andrew’s Centre, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, treating children and adults with clefts of the lip and palate from all over the North Thames region. This includes North London, Essex and South and West Hertfordshire.
In 1995, the number of centres in England and Wales offering treatment for clefts was reduced from around fifty to nine. This means the teams at the nine centres are now treating more clefts per year and as a result are able to offer a better service to their patients and families.
Peter Ayliffe - Consultant Maxillofacial Surgeon
Jill Bailey - Clinical Nurse Specialist
Gwen Benny-Wilson - Restorative Dentist
Raouf Chorbachi - Consultant Audiologist
Lesley Cochrane - Consultant ENT Surgeon
Louise Conn - Cleft Co-ordinator (GOSH)
Maria Fernandez-Vallecas - Photographer
Alex Forsyth - Speech and Language Therapist
Alex Habel - Consultant Paediatrician
Norman Hay - Consultant Orthodontist
Daniela Hearst - Clinical Psychologist
Julie Hughes - Clinical Nurse Specialist
Loshan Kangesu - Consultant Plastic Surgeon
Ian Laskey - Audit and Database Manager
Melissa Lees - Geneticist
Sharon Lim - Consultant Paediatrician
Michael Mars - Consultant Orthodontist
Carol Mason - Paediatric Dentist
Anne Mayne - Speech and Language Therapist
Louise Mills - Speech and Language Therapist
Natalie Pancewicz - Speech and Language Therapist
Valerie Pereira - Speech and Language Therapist
Marie Pinkstone - Speech and Language Therapist
Debbie Sell - Speech and Language Therapist
Marian Sewell - Dietitian
Melanie Sharp - Clinical Nurse Specialist
Joanna Shearer - Clinical Psychologist
Rachel Skeath - Dietitian
Brian Sommerlad - Consultant Plastic Surgeon
Diane Stretch - Cleft Secretary (St Andrew's)
Simon Van Eeden - Cleft Fellow
Josephine Wanja - Cleft Secretary (GOSH)
Karen Wilson - Cleft Co-ordinator (St Andrew's)
Anna Winyard - Clinical Unit Manager
Sally Wright - Clinical Nurse Special
Contact name
Cleft Coordinator - Louise Conn
Full postal address
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Great Ormond Street
London
WC1N 3JH
Service telephone number 020 7829 7922
Service fax number 020 7829 7947
Service email address Send an email to this service
For urgent admissions outside of office hours please call the switchboard on +44 (0)20 7405 9200.
The Cleft Lip and Palate team have been involved in extensive interdisciplinary research and have many ongoing projects.
Click Here for recent publications.
The North Thames Cleft Centre is run by a multidisciplinary team, made up of specialist doctors, nurses and therapists. We want to make sure you and your child are involved in planning his or her treatment with all the relevant members of the team who will be at the outpatient appointments. This means that you are seen by several members of the team at the same time in a multi-disciplinary clinic. This may feel a little daunting at times but means you only attend one appointment instead of many individual appointments, and it also means that the team members can discuss, with you, priorities for treatment. Often, one of the team may see you and your child in a separate room to discuss progress on a particular issue such as how your child’s speech is developing.
Sometimes clefts can be diagnosed before birth, during routine antenatal scans. If your baby’s cleft is diagnosed before birth, we will arrange an appointment for you to discuss the diagnosis and explain the plan of treatment.
If your baby’s cleft is diagnosed when he or she is born, a member of the team will visit you in the maternity unit within 48 hours to discuss the diagnosis and explain the plan of treatment.
Your child’s operation will take place at either Great Ormond Street Hospital or St Andrew’s Centre. The same team carries out operations at both sites, so it does not matter at which centre the operation happens. We will try to arrange your child’s operation at the hospital nearest your home.
If your child needs an operation and is over 16 years old, this may happen at the St Andrew’s Centre, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, or at University College Hospital, London. Again, the same surgeons work at these hospitals.
This is a plan of what to expect while your child is under the care of the North Thames Cleft Centre. It identifies the appointments, tests, assessments and operations your child will need. As each child is different, we may need to adjust this plan from time to time but the following is a rough guide for those children with clefts of the lip and palate.
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Your child's age
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What to expect
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Birth
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Outpatient appointment - discuss operation
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Birth - 6 weeks
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Outpatient appointment - hearing test
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3 months
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Admission to hospital for lip repair
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6 months
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Admission to hospital for palate repair
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9 months
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Outpatient appointment - post op and hearing test
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18 months
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Outpatient appointment - Speech and Language Therapy assessment
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2 years
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Outpatient appointment - Cleft clinic
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3 years
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Outpatient appointment - Speech and Language Therapy assessment
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4 years
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Outpatient appointment - Cleft clinic
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5 years
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Outpatient appointment - Clinical review
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7.5 years
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Outpatient appointment - Cleft clinic
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10 years
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Outpatient appointment - Clinical review
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12.5 years
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Outpatient appointment - Cleft clinic
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15 years
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Outpatient appointment - Clinical review
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16 years
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Outpatient appointment - Cleft clinic
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20 years
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Outpatient appointment - Clinical review
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Children with clefts of the lip or palate only will need to be seen less frequently.
These are just the planned appointments and we are happy to see you at any time if you have concerns or worries. If individual members of the team need to see your child more regularly, we will arrange these appointments for you. If your child is likely to need several assessments at the same age, we will do our best to arrange them for the same day.
In addition to these appointments in the multidisciplinary clinics, at certain stages of treatment your child may also be seen separately in one of the departments such as speech and language therapy, audiology, orthodontics or psychology.
Cleft lip repair is carried out at either Great Ormond Street Hospital or at the St Andrew’s Centre, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford. The operation is usually carried out at three to four months of age. Although some surgeons in the UK have carried out neonatal repair (within the first one to two weeks after birth) we believe that this neonatal repair has no advantage for the baby and may actually result in a less satisfactory result.
Please click here for further information regarding cleft lip repair.
Cleft palate repair is carried out at either Great Ormond Street Hospital or at the St Andrew’s Centre, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford. This operation is usually carried out at three to four months of age. Although some surgeons in the UK have carried out neonatal repair (within the first one to two weeks after birth) we believe that this neonatal repair has no advantage for the baby and may actually result in a less satisfactory result.
Please click here for further details regarding cleft palate repair.
The specialist speech and language therapists in the team are based at the twin-site hubs of the North Thames Cleft Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and at St Andrew’s Centre, Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, with sessions at The Royal London Hospital and at Mount Vernon Hospital. They liaise closely with therapists in other hospitals and in the community, where much treatment can take place.
Please click here for further information on Speech and Language Therapy.
Please click here for information regarding hearing.
Please click here for information regarding orthodontics.
Please click here for details regarding cleft lip and/or palate and anaesthesia.
The nationally agreed times for cleft lip and palate clinical review are at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years of age. Patients will be asked to attend at these ages to obtain review and clinical records, and these will be collected and stored at either GOS or St Andrew’s. These records will be reviewed by the multidisciplinary team at special clinical review sessions and results and decisions will be reported to parents and patients, general medical practitioners and other involved orthodontists and dental specialists.
Outpatient appointments
The multidisciplinary cleft lip and palate clinics are as follows:
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Great Ormond Street Hospital - Monday afternoons and Friday mornings and Mondays and Wednesdays for review clinics
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St Andrew’s Centre - Tuesday afternoons and Fridays (review clinics) in the St Andrew’s Outpatients Department
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Royal London Hospital - every month on Monday afternoons
This information does not constitute health or medical advice and will not necessarily reflect treatment at other hospitals. If you have any questions, please ask your doctor. No liability can be taken as a result of using this information.
Referral process
As a tertiary care hospital, all children who attend Great Ormond Street Hospital must be referred via local hospital consultants, community paediatricians or, in some circumstances, via a GP.
Antenatal referrals
Contact Clinical Nurse Specialists by telephone and fax as soon as possible after diagnosis.
A nurse will then make immediate contact with the family to arrange an appointment.
New baby referrals
Contact Clinical Nurse Specialists immediately by telephone.
Both numbers will have details of the person providing on-call cover during out of hours.
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