Britain’s top children’s doctors 2012

By :- Kate, On November 19, 2015 in ::-Tips

From allergy experts to urologists, a directory of the country’s leading paediatric specialists

Allergies

Andrew Clark
Consultant in paediatric allergy, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge
Head of paediatric allergy services, with a specialism in treating children with a peanut allergy. His trials have shown how a controlled regime of feeding peanut flour in gradually increasing doses can increase patients’ tolerance a thousandfold.

Adam Fox
Consultant paediatric allergist, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London

Gideon Lack
Head of the children’s allergy service, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London
The professor of paediatric allergy at King’s College London has a particular interest in the relationship between food allergies, eczema and asthma. Published new findings this year indicating that peanut allergy may primarily be caused by being exposed to nuts through skin early in life. Has received the William Frankland Award for work on peanut allergies.

John Warner
Head of paediatrics, St Mary’s Hospital, London
Professor of paediatrics at Imperial College, London, specialising in the early-life origins of asthma and related disorders. Currently working with Asthma UK on a new study to discover whether women who take vitamin D supplements during pregnancy lower their child’s asthma and allergy risk. Chairman of the paediatric section of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Cardiology

David Anderson
Consultant cardiac surgeon, the Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London
Professor of paediatric cardiac surgery who specialises in treating children with complex left-heart anomalies and the intricate surgical procedures required in such cases. He introduced the Norwood surgical procedure, which involves connecting the aorta to the right ventricle of the heart. He has performed more than 200 Norwood operations.

William Brawn
Consultant cardiac surgeon, Birmingham Children’s Hospital

Andrew Parry
Consultant congenital cardiac surgeon, University Hospitals Bristol
Established a programme in Bristol to care for children born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, where underdeveloped left heart chambers cannot pump blood directly into the aorta and around the body. Untreated, the condition is fatal. Treatment involves a series of complex operations, considered among the most challenging in cardiac surgery.

Victor Tsang
Lead clinician, cardiothoracic surgery, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Specialist in neonatal cardiac surgery at GOSH since 1997 and consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Heart Hospital in London. Has performed operations worldwide and is a trustee of Chain of Hope, the charity providing heart surgery to underprivileged children in war-torn and developing countries including Jamaica, Kenya and Egypt. Has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, lectures widely and is co-editor of a world-renowned paediatric cardiac surgical textbook.

Dentistry

Kate Barnard
Senior consultant dentist, Chelsea Children’s Hospital, London
Head of the largest paediatric dental team in northwest London, providing care for sick children at several hospitals, including the Chelsea Children’s Hospital and the Royal Brompton. Treats dental trauma and genetic conditions affecting the teeth, and campaigns to improve children’s oral health. Also involved in teaching trainee paediatric dentists.

Amanda O’Donnell
Consultant in paediatric dentistry, Eastman Dental Hospital, London
Clinical lead who regularly treats children with congenitally missing teeth, designing and fitting dentures to provide them with perfect smiles. Developed a paediatric service for patients with severe medical conditions, including cancer and bleeding disorders.

Dermatology

Tim Clayton
Consultant paediatric dermatologist, Salford Royal and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Skin surgeon who specialises in treating vascular birthmarks, genetic skin disease and eczema. An honorary lecturer at the University of Manchester, he has also researched the genetic origins of eczema and dermatitis.

Mary Glover
Consultant paediatric dermatologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Head of the paediatric dermatology service, with a special interest in vascular malformations and tumours of vascular tissue. Extensive experience in the management of eczema. A trustee of Changing Faces, the charity giving support and information to people with disfigurement and their families. Honorary secretary of the British Society for Paediatric Dermatology.

Celia Moss
Consultant dermatologist, Birmingham Children’s Hospital
Honorary professor of paediatric dermatology at BCH. In 2002, she established one of only two UK specialist paediatric services for treating children suffering from the severe skin-blistering disease epidermolysis bullosa. Has also campaigned to raise awareness of rare children’s skin disorders.

Ear, nose and throat

Kevin Green
Consultant ENT surgeon, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Leads the surgical side of Manchester Royal Infirmary’s bone-anchored hearing-aid programme. In December 2010, he fitted the first child in the UK with a middle-ear hearing-aid implant. Extensively published and active in clinical research.

Ben Hartley
Consultant paediatric otolaryngologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Leading paediatric ear, nose and throat, head and neck surgeon who specialises in complex head and neck tumours, malformations and airway surgery. Has developed many surgical procedures in this area, particularly for cystic hygromas (birth defects that cause a mass to grow in the head and neck area) and vascular malformation.

Haytham Kubba
Consultant paediatric otolaryngologist, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow
Lead clinician in children’s ENT surgery at Yorkhill Hospital and head of the Scottish National Complex Airways Management in Children service. Leads multidisciplinary teams for tracheostomy care, tracheal disorders and delivery of babies with congenital airway obstruction, as well as specialist clinics for children with neuro-disabilities.

Jeremy Lavy
Consultant in ear, nose and throat surgery, Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, London
Director of the hospital’s cochlear-implant programme and a specialist in hearing restoration. Has pioneered work on “soft surgery” for children having cochlear implants, preserving as much of the natural cochlea as possible to take advantage of any future technologies that may emerge. His team has reduced the average time taken for a bilateral cochlear implant from five hours to three, so that many children now have their surgery as a day case.

Gerry O’Donoghue
Professor of Otology and Neurotology at the University of Nottingham, and consultant neuro-otologist, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
See feature.

Emergency paediatrics

Ed Abrahamson
Lead consultant, children’s emergency department, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London
Heads the second-largest dedicated children’s A&E department in Britain, which treats more than 30,000 acutely ill children a year. Closely involved with measures to improve emergency care in London for sick children, he is widely published on the subject and is acknowledged as an inspirational teacher.

Stephanie Smith
Consultant emergency paediatrician and head of service, Nottingham University Hospital
Leads children’s A&E services in Nottingham and is strongly involved in improving national A&E standards of care for children. Recently published tougher new UK care standards as chair of the committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Also represents paediatric care on the College of Emergency Medicine’s clinical effectiveness committee.

Emer Sutherland
Children’s lead for the emergency department, King’s College Hospital, London
Consultant emergency physician whose South London unit sees a high proportion of teenage victims of gun and knife crime. She has driven the creation of the UK’s first A&E-based scheme at King’s to help lift young people out of gang violence, working alongside youth workers to try to break cycles of violence.

Endocrinology

Mehul Dattani
Head of paediatric endocrinology, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Professor of paediatric endocrinology at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, who specialises in treating conditions affecting the pituitary gland, which produces hormones that regulate many biological functions including growth, metabolism, puberty and blood pressure. Chairman of the British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes.

Julie Edge
Consultant in paediatric diabetes, Children’s Hospital, Oxford
Leads a multidisciplinary children’s diabetes service that is one of the largest in the country, with more than 300 patients and some of the best outcomes in Britain. A member of the Department of Health’s children’s diabetes implementation group, she was clinical lead for the latest survey of diabetes conducted by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Peter Hindmarsh
Honorary consultant paediatric endocrinologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and University College Hospital
Professor of paediatric endocrinology at UCL who specialises in improving paediatric diabetes care. His team uses intensive insulin doses and insulin-pump therapy: a wearable device delivering precise insulin doses that can significantly improve blood-sugar control. Some 64 per cent of young diabetic patients receive this form of therapy at UCL, compared with 5 per cent across the UK.

Russell Viner
Adolescent physician, Institute of Child Health, University College London
The professor of paediatric and adolescent medicine at UCLH was the first consultant to be appointed in adolescent medicine in the UK (in 1997). In the late Nineties, he set up the UK’s first medical services for teenagers jointly between UCLH and Great Ormond Street Hospital, focusing on teens with obesity and difficult diabetes. His diabetes clinic achieved the best control results in England in the recent National Paediatric Diabetes audit.

Gastroenterology

Antonino Morabito
Consultant paediatric and neonatal surgeon, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Leads the paediatric autologous bowel reconstruction and rehabilitation programme for children with short bowel syndrome (in which nutrients are not properly absorbed). Also performs operations to address congenital malformations and gastro-oesophageal reflux in neurologically impaired children. Author of almost 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and honorary senior lecturer at the universities of Manchester and Salford.

Ian Sanderson
Director of digestive diseases, Barts Health NHS Trust, London
The professor of paediatric gastroenterology has been head of the Centre for Digestive Diseases at Queen Mary, University of London since 2003, and also leads the inflammatory-bowel paediatric service. Internationally recognised for his investigations into the effect of diet on genes in the developing intestine, and diets that can help with chronic gut conditions such as Crohn’s.

Peter Sullivan
Honorary consultant in paediatric gastroenterology, Children’s Hospital, Oxford
Head of the department of paediatrics at the University of Oxford, a specialist in neonatal nutrition who has pioneered work to help children who cannot feed properly because of brain damage. Currently developing dietary supplements that may aid the self-repair of neurons in brain-damaged babies.

Haematology

Rachael Hough
Consultant in haematology and stem-cell transplantation, University College London Hospitals
Clinical lead of the UK’s largest teenage cancer service, who has also developed an adolescent-focused stem-cell transplant practice. Established and chairs the British Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation’s umbilical-cord blood working group. Chief investigator of two National Cancer Research Institute-backed cord-blood transplant protocols. Also honorary senior lecturer in haematology/transplantation at UCL.

Paul Telfer
Honorary consultant haematologist, St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London NHS Trusts
The senior lecturer in haematology at Queen Mary, University of London specialises in paediatric haematology and in haemoglobin disorders. A leading authority on thalassaemia and sickle-cell disease, he also works as the lead specialist for the East London and Essex Haemoglobinopathy Clinical Network.

Rob Wynn
Consultant paediatric haematologist, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Director of the paediatric blood and marrow transplant unit whose special interests are the transplantation of blood and bone marrow in children with non-malignant diseases. Research interests include improving the care of children undergoing transplant or treatment for haematological disorders.

Hepatology

Anil Dhawan
Consultant paediatric hepatologist and clinical director of child health, King’s College Hospital, London
The director of the paediatric liver service at King’s, the largest of its kind in Europe, has pioneered the implantation of donor liver cells into the abdomen to prevent the need for transplantation and the first transplant of donor liver cells, such as kupffer cells, directly into the liver.

Deirdre Kelly
Paediatric hepatologist, Birmingham Children’s Hospital
Professor who set up the paediatric liver unit at BCH to provide a national and international service for children with liver failure and undergoing liver transplantation. With survival rates of more than 90 per cent, the unit has also pioneered small-bowel transplantation for children in the UK.

Immunology and infectious diseases

Graham Davies
Consultant paediatric immunologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Leads work to establish Europe’s first thymus-transplant programme; patients born without this gland have severely impaired immune systems. The first patient was treated in 2009 and Davies’ unit now receives referrals from across Europe.

Bobby Gaspar
Honorary consultant in paediatric immunology, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Professor of paediatrics and immunology at the Institute of Child Health, University College London. Particular interest in the use of stem-cell transplantation and gene therapy, which he pioneered with children with “boy in the bubble” syndrome, enabling children born without functioning immune systems to repair their faulty genes and lead normal lives.

Andrew Riordan
Consultant in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool
The honorary lecturer at the University of Liverpool specialises in serious infections in children, including TB and hepatitis, inherited immune disorders and immunisation. Well known for his research into meningococcal disease and developing the paediatric infectious disease service at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. Associate editor of Archives of Disease in Childhood since 2007.

Mike Sharland
Lead consultant paediatrician, St George’s Hospital, London
The professor of paediatric infectious diseases at St George’s Hospital Medical School has a specialist interest in prescribing antimicrobial drugs for children, including antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals, and has developed the hospital’s paediatric infectious diseases unit into an internationally recognised centre. Also set up the Collaborative HIV Paediatric Study, which collects data on antiviral drug use, its outcome and toxicity for all children in the UK with HIV.

Intensive care

Allan Goldman
Consultant in paediatric intensive care, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Paediatric cardiac intensive care expert with a special interest in patient safety. Incorporated safety techniques used in motor-racing pit stops into healthcare to improve the way young patients are handed over from theatre to intensive care. Pioneered a series of Risky Business conferences, in which lessons from high-risk industries and extreme sports are applied to healthcare.

Duncan Macrae
Director of children’s services, Royal Brompton Hospital, London
Consultant in paediatric intensive care with specialist interests in mechanical circulatory support for advanced heart failure and the treatment of pulmonary hypertension in intensive care. A consultant for more than a decade at Great Ormond Street Hospital, he also sits on the scientific committee of the World Congress on Paediatric Critical Care, is president of the Paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society and an associate editor of the American journal Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.

Mental health

Margaret DeJong
Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
The senior lecturer at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, specialises in psychological trauma and child maltreatment. She leads a renowned team treating the complex needs of children in care or adopted from care, and performs extensive research in this area, as well as providing expert evidence to the courts. Her other role is in supporting medically ill children in the hospital who have psychiatric complications as part of their illness.

Liz Didcock
Consultant paediatrician, Nottingham University Hospitals
Provides a high-quality, accessible paediatric service in a deprived area of Nottingham for children with complex health and social difficulties. She ensures children are managed out of hospital if possible, jointly with primary and social care and education services where appropriate. She has also drawn up national guidelines for the welfare of newborns whose mothers have psychiatric illness.

Isobel Heyman
Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Working at the interface between neurology and psychiatry, she has achieved internationally recognised success rates in improving functioning in children with severe obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome. Also works with the hospital’s world-renowned epilepsy surgery programme, where she has pioneered the recognition and treatment of mental-health needs in children with severe epilepsy. Vice-chair of the charity OCD Action.

Janet Treasure
Director of the Eating Disorder Unit and professor of psychiatry at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Neonatal medicine

Neena Modi
Honorary consultant neonatologist, Chelsea Children’s Hospital, London
The professor of neonatal medicine is an expert on neonatal nutrition and leads the hospital’s research unit in this area, which works to improve treatment standards for babies in neonatal intensive care. Her pioneering research includes a study of how nutrition during pregnancy and early infancy may influence long-term health.

Nim Subhedar
Consultant neonatologist, Liverpool Women’s Hospital
See feature.

Marianne Thoresen
Consultant neonatologist, St Michael’s Hospital, Bristol
In 1995, the professor of neonatal neuroscience at the University of Bristol was the first to show that cooling newborns who had been starved of oxygen during birth could reduce their risk of suffering brain damage. Has subsequently pioneered the clinical use of therapeutic hypothermia in babies, which is now provided by neonatal intensive care units across the UK, and saved thousands of lives by showing that giving xenon gas to oxygen-starved newborns further boosts success rates.

Tim Watts
Consultant neonatologist, Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London
Head of one of the busiest neonatal units in the country. His team of 13 consultants care for more than 800 sick newborns a year, specialising in very premature babies and those with severe cardiac conditions from all over the country. His own specialisms are neonatal infection and haematology, about which he has contributed to a number of books.

Nephrology

Simon Choong
Consultant urological surgeon, University College London Hospitals
Specialises in minimally invasive treatment of kidney stones in children with complex medical problems, many of whom are born prematurely. Has been working to build a national paediatric-stone centre and has established a national referral service for children who have complex stones. Also the director of a training programme for keyhole techniques in stone surgery.

Stephen Marks
Consultant paediatric nephrologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
See feature.

Neurology

Peter Baxter
Consultant paediatric neurologist, Sheffield Children’s Hospital
Internationally renowned paediatric neurologist who has developed specialist services at Sheffield for children with neuropathy and ataxia. Also works as an expert for the Department of Health’s study into progressive intellectual and neurological deterioration in children. President of the British Paediatric Neurology Association.

Christopher Chandler
Consultant paediatric neurosurgeon, King’s College Hospital, London
Leads the paediatric and adolescent neurosurgical service at King’s, with main interests in paediatric neurosurgery and neuro-oncology. This includes the management of brain and spinal-cord tumours, brain tumours that have appeared as secondary cancers, epilepsy surgery and hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”).

Helen Cross
Honorary consultant in paediatric neurology at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Holds the Prince of Wales’s Chair of Childhood Epilepsy and has been involved specifically in developing epilepsy services, particularly the epilepsy surgery and ketogenic (high fat, adequate protein, low carbohydrate) diet programmes. Her research focuses on how surgery and diet can improve early onset complex epilepsy. She was clinical adviser to the recent update of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on the management of epilepsy.

Helen Fernandes
Consultant neurosurgeon, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge
Lead paediatric neurosurgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals, specialising in brain and spinal problems. As associate director of postgraduate medicine at CUH, she is responsible for teaching more than 80 junior doctors and is also chair of Women in Surgery. Member of the academic sub-committee of the British Paediatric Neurosurgical Group.

Cheryl Hemingway
Consultant paediatric neurologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Pioneered ground-breaking techniques to explore patients’ response to brain inflammation and infection, which she uses to provide specialised clinical care to children with neuro-inflammatory disorders and neurological problems. Runs one of the largest clinics in the country for children with multiple sclerosis and other rare demyelinating disorders.

Mike Pike
Consultant in paediatric neurology, Oxford Children’s Hospital
Leads a team providing a rapid, round-the-clock response service across six counties for children with neurological conditions. Specialises in rare disorders and runs a clinic jointly with a child neuropsychiatrist for children with Tourette’s. His research focuses on dancing-eye syndrome, which can prove severely disabling. Medical adviser to the Dancing Eye Syndrome Support Trust and a trustee of the Child Brain Injury Trust.

Chris Rittey
Consultant paediatric neurologist and clinical director, Sheffield Children’s Hospital
Established the UK’s largest vagal-nerve stimulation service for epilepsy. This process uses an implanted electrical generator to send electrical impulses to the vagus nerve at the side of the neck and then to the brain, which can reduce the incidence and severity of seizures. Also developed an integrated regional paediatric neurology service with outreach clinics.

Alison Salt
Consultant paediatrician in neurodisability and lead clinician, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
The senior lecturer at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and lead clinician for the Wolfson Neurodisability Service at Great Ormond Street Hospital. With an international reputation for her expertise in autism, she was also central to the development of the early intervention programme for young, visually impaired children, now implemented across the UK.

Sameer Zuberi
Consultant paediatric neurologist, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow
Expert in epilepsy, neurogenetics and sleep disorders, he established and leads the Glasgow Epilepsy Genetics service, the first and busiest genetic-testing service for children with epilepsy in the UK. This allows early correct diagnosis for severe epilepsies, which results in appropriate treatment and prevents unnecessary invasive tests. Founder of the Scottish Paediatric Epilepsy Network.

Oncology

Penelope Brock
Consultant paediatric oncologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
UK lead researcher in an international trial to investigate new systems of treatment for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. Research results of the methods she has helped to develop show that they offer 16 per cent better disease-free survival after three years compared with treatments based on the current American protocol, with fewer toxic side-effects.

James Bruce
Paediatric consultant surgeon, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Lead surgeon for paediatric oncology, with a specialism in tumours. His interests include soft-tissue sarcoma, neuroblastoma and kidney tumours. Also focuses on rare endocrine conditions and is the lead surgeon for hyperinsulinism in infancy (frequent episodes of low blood sugar).

Jacqueline Cornish
Director of paediatric stem-cell transplantation, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children
Head of the division of women’s and children’s services, she was instrumental in the development of an international referral centre for paediatric bone-marrow transplant. Under her direction, more than 600 children have received unrelated donor bone-marrow transplants for conditions such as leukaemia and rare inborn errors of metabolism.

Nicholas Goulden
Consultant in bone-marrow transplant and paediatric haematology, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
An expert in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), he has worked for 20 years to develop a diagnostic system called Minimal Residual Disease. This detects how much leukaemia remains in a child’s blood at remission and thus how likely it is that they will relapse, so the child can then be given individually tailored doses of chemotherapy. The NHS has integrated this method into the standard treatment regime for children with ALL.

Andrew Peet
Honorary consultant in paediatric oncology, Birmingham Children’s Hospital
The reader in paediatric oncology at the University of Birmingham looks after one in 20 children in the UK with brain tumours. As lead of the university’s brain-tumour research group, he is developing functional imaging for the diagnosis, understanding and management of childhood brain tumours. He has also led pan-European teams in using MRI scans to detect the chemical fingerprint of brain tumours, and co-ordinated a 3.7 million drive to build the 3T Magnetic Resonance Research Centre in Birmingham.

Barry Pizer
Consultant paediatric oncologist, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool
Specialises in tumours of the central nervous system in children. Member of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool, with 100 published research papers and book contributions. Founding member and chair of the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group’s Paediatric Oncology in Developing Countries branch.

Derek Roebuck
Consultant paediatric interventional radiologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Led the development of the trust’s paediatric interventional radiology team, which uses image-guided keyhole surgery to perform minimally invasive operations on children. He specialises in children with cancer, high blood pressure and life-threatening airway problems.

Hamish Wallace
Consultant paediatric oncologist, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh
The honorary professor in the School of Clinical Sciences and Community Health at the University of Edinburgh is an expert in Hodgkin’s lymphoma, fertility preservation and the effects of treatment on survivors of childhood cancer. Since the Nineties he has harvested ovarian cortical strips for young women at high risk of infertility following childhood treatment for cancer. Head of the EuroNet trial comparing different ways of treating Hodgkin’s lymphoma and their long-term side effects, and president of the European Network for Paediatric Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Kate Wheeler
Consultant in paediatric oncology, the Children’s Hospital, Oxford
Has an international reputation in the management of neuroblastoma, and has been instrumental in designing new international clinical trials to improve survival rates. Chair of the Thames Valley Children’s Cancer Network for ten years and medical trustee of the Neuroblastoma Society.

Ophthalmology

Ken Nischal
Head of the Clinical and Academic Department of Ophthalmology, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Leading paediatric eye specialist who has developed a service offering treatment and transplants for very young children who have been born with problems in their corneas, which may lead to them becoming blind. Also specialises in paediatric cataract and glaucoma and is section editor for the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

Peng Tee Khaw
Director of research and development at Moorfields Eye Hospital

Orthopaedics

Naomi Davis
Consultant in paediatric orthopaedic surgery, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
Expert in solving club foot without heavily invasive surgery, instead following the Ponseti method, which involves treating babies in the first weeks of life with gentle manipulation, plaster casts, boots and braces, which straighten the foot. Has treated nearly 500 patients with this method; her evidence shows that 95 per cent of children can effectively be treated. Her department also trains practitioners from around the world.

Jonathan Lucas
Lead clinician for spinal surgery, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London
Head of a leading service to correct spine deformities. Treats conditions such as scoliosis in children with significant neurodisabilities, as well as in those with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis – curvature of the spine in patients who are otherwise healthy.

Fergal Monsell
Consultant paediatric orthopaedic surgeon, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children
Specialises in limb-reconstruction surgery, operating on deformities of the arms and legs caused either by congenital disease or trauma. Has considerable experience in treating patients with the skeletal consequences of meningococcal septicaemia. His research into all aspects of paediatric trauma has been widely published.

Tim Theologis
Consultant in paediatric orthopaedic surgery, Children’s Hospital, Oxford
Led the UK development of minimally invasive techniques in lower-limb surgery in children with cerebral palsy. The two-year follow-up results show that patients have significantly reduced operating time, blood loss and hospital stay compared with those who undergo conventional surgery. His surgery also covers children with bone tumours and those with neurological disabilities.

Plastic and reconstructive surgery

David Dunaway
Consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Head of the craniofacial unit at GOSH, with a special interest in paediatric craniofacial tumours, facial deformity and vascular anomalies. Led the reconstructive team that least year successfully separated conjoined twins Rital and Ritag Gaboura, who were born with fused skulls. A past president of the plastic surgery section of the Royal Society of Medicine and lead reconstructive surgeon for the charity Facing Africa.

Simon Eccles
Craniofacial surgeon and clinical director, Chelsea Children’s Hospital, London
Specialises in paediatric craniofacial surgery for the correction of a wide range of congenital deformities of the head and neck, and facial disfigurement caused by disease or trauma. As the clinical director of the new Chelsea Children’s Hospital at Chelsea and Westminster, he led the development of state-of-the-art facilities for its patients – more than 80,000 children are treated there every year. Volunteer surgeon for the charity Facing the World, which brings children from the developing world to the UK for life-saving treatment for disfiguring conditions.

Adriaan Grobbelaar
Programme director and clinical lead, consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Royal Free Hospital Hampstead NHS Trust
One of the world’s leading facial reanimation specialists, who has pioneered innovative surgical procedures, such as transplanting muscle from underneath the arms into both sides of a child’s face in a single operation.

Owase Jeelani
Consultant paediatric neurosurgeon, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Specialist in craniofacial surgery and honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Child Health, University College London. In 2011, he worked on the neurovascular separation of Rital and Ritag Gaboura, and has helped to develop a technique for saving the lives of babies born with skulls that have fused and won’t grow to accommodate the expanding brain.

Niall Kirkpatrick
Consultant plastic surgeon at the Craniofacial Unit, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London

Greg O’Toole
Consultant plastic surgeon, Royal Free Hospital, London

Respiratory medicine

Siobhan Carr
Clinical director, regional paediatric cystic fibrosis centre, Barts Health, London
A respiratory paediatrician with special clinical interest in cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and tuberculosis. Since 1998 she has been involved in the London CF collaboration: the first long-term study of children with cystic fibrosis. Also involved in local research into sickle-cell disease and sleep disorder.

Mark Everard
Paediatric respiratory consultant, Sheffield Children’s Hospital
A professor at the University of Sheffield with an international reputation for his work on paediatric respiratory medicine, including asthma, inhaled therapies, bacterial bronchitis and bronchiolitis. Involved in the development of national and international guidelines for care of such conditions and was recently awarded a personal chair at the university.

Jonathan Grigg
Honorary consultant paediatrician, Barts Health, London
Professor in paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary, University of London. He also runs a one-stop asthma clinic and is principal investigator in several UK multicentre studies into pre-school wheeze and asthma. His environmental work focuses on the effects of air pollution on children’s health, and in particular on identifying the links between air pollution and children’s vulnerability to bacterial pneumonia.

Giles Peek
Head of the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre, University Hospitals of Leicester
Director of the Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) programme, which helps newborns and children with severe breathing trouble. The facility at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, is now one of the largest in the world. His work has shown that patients with severe acute respiratory failure, and those ill from the H1N1 flu virus, do better with ECMO than on conventional hospital ventilators.

Rheumatology and chronic pain

Eileen Baildam
Consultant paediatric rheumatologist, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool
Specialist interests include scleroderma in childhood, childhood lupus and dermatomyositis, as well as rare complex multisystem inflammatory disorders. Led the trial of a new drug, Tocilizumab, for juvenile arthritis, which improved symptoms by 90 per cent in around two thirds of patients. Research includes studies of the quality of life of children with scleroderma and juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Jacqui Clinch
Consultant paediatric rheumatologist, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children
Specialises in children’s arthritis and chronic pain and in 1999 co-developed a unique national unit dedicated to the rehabilitation of children, adolescents and families significantly affected by childhood chronic pain. In 2003, she was named National Hospital Doctor of the Year for services to childhood pain. Research interests include hypermobility (double-jointedness), arthritis and osteogenesis imperfecta.

Nicholas Wilkinson
Consultant paediatric rheumatologist, Oxford University Hospitals
Honorary clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford. Specialises in paediatric rheumatology, chronic pain in children and adolescents, paediatric sports and exercise medicine, and skeletal dysplasia, and oversees children at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. Given the Kourir Award by the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society in 2003 and is an executive board member of the British Society of Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology.

Sleep

Paul Gringras
Director of the paediatric sleep disorder service, the Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London
The professor in sleep medicine at King’s College London heads a unique comprehensive specialist paediatric sleep-disorder unit and has set up a “cradle-to-grave” sleep service at Guy’s, working with psychologists, physiologists and technicians to improve sleep. Lead investigator on studies exploring sleep, ADHD and autism, whose research focuses on the impact of poor sleep on children.

Surgery (general)

Alex Barnacle
Consultant paediatric interventional radiologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
At the forefront of this emerging speciality, developing and refining new image-guided, minimally invasive techniques to diagnose and treat rare disorders in children. Her special interest is treating vascular malformations (complex disfiguring birthmarks); she works with experts in areas such as ENT surgery, haematology and ophthalmology to find new ways to treat conditions that are otherwise considered life-limiting in children.

Ashish Desai
Consultant paediatric surgeon, King’s College Hospital, London
Has extensive experience in paediatric laparoscopy and thoracoscopic procedures and performs single-port keyhole surgery to achieve virtually scarless operations in children. At King’s, he has set up the UK’s first adolescent bariatric-surgery service, which performs weight-loss operations for morbidly obese teenagers. Specialist adviser in bariatric surgery for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Munther Haddad
Paediatric and neonatal surgeon, Chelsea Children’s Hospital, London
Service director for paediatric surgery at Chelsea, he is a pioneer of children’s laparoscopic surgery, particularly gastro-intestinal and neonatal surgery, and has taught techniques around the world. Currently pioneering the use of robotic surgery to treat children, he is chairman of the Children’s Hospital Trust Fund, a charity that is raising 1.5 million to buy a high-tech precision surgery robot called Pluto for the hospital.

Gordon MacKinlay
Consultant paediatric surgeon, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh
Introduced therapeutic laparoscopic surgery to the hospital in 1994, which has led to it becoming known for its minimally invasive surgery on children and use of advanced technology, including 3-D scanning. Senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and past president-elect of the International Pediatric Endosurgery Group and the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons.

Surgery (neonatal)

Carl Davis
Consultant paediatric and neonatal surgeon, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow
The Barclay Lecturer at the University of Glasgow has a particular interest in neonatal surgery and specialises in the management of congenital diaphragmatic hernia, for which he has set national clinical care standards. Also a pioneer in developing life-support services for babies in Scotland.

Pranav Pandya
Consultant in foetal medicine and obstetrics, University College Hospital London

Donald Peebles
Consultant obstetrician, University College Hospital London

Transplants

Michael Burch
Consultant cardiologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
Head of the cardiology department, which provides a full range of paediatric cardiology care and heart, lung and combined heart-lung transplants. Developed the first paediatric heart-failure clinic in the UK. Also developed the world’s first randomised study of stem-cell therapy for dilated cardiomyopathy in children, using the child’s own bone-marrow cells. Director of the largest children’s cardiothoracic transplantation programme in Europe.

Martin Drage
Consultant paediatric transplant surgeon, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and the Evelina Children’s Hospital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London

Martin Elliott
Director of transplantation and the tracheal service, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
The professor of paediatric cardiothoracic surgery at University College London established and leads the national service for severe tracheal disease in children and helped to establish paediatric heart and lung transplantation at Great Ormond Street. Started the European Congenital Heart Defects Database and recently pioneered the world’s first stem-cell-supported tracheal transplantation in a child.

Geoff Koffman
Head of renal transplantation and clinical director of abdominal medicine and surgery, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
Urology

Stuart O’Toole
Consultant paediatric surgeon and urologist, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow
Introduced minimally invasive renal surgery to the hospital and developed its department of paediatric urology. An experienced surgeon in disorders of sexual differentiation, he provides surgical support to the Scottish Disorders of Sex Development Network. Assistant editor of the Journal of Pediatric Urology and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow.

Alun Williams
Consultant paediatric urologist and transplant surgeon, Nottingham University Hospitals
Specialist in paediatric urology and transplantation who co-leads the living donor nephrectomy service and paediatric transplant service. Involved in developing a newly introduced guideline on managing lower urinary tract dysfunction in neurological disease for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).