Maxillo-facial surgery: a complete range of high-quality services

Since his arrival at the Europe Hospitals in 2003 as Head of Maxillofacial Surgery, Dr Sergio Siciliano has significantly developed the department. We take a look with him at twenty years of development in maxillo-facial surgery at the institution and the varied, high-quality services on offer today.

‘Maxillo-facial surgery (MFS) involves both soft tissue (skin, muscles, blood vessels, etc.) and hard tissue (the skeleton of the skull and face). Although our department is called maxillofacial surgery, it's important to remember that we treat both surgical and medical pathologies,’ says Dr Siciliano.

The CMF at the Europe Hospitals is growing fast
Initially, the clinic's main focus was oral and dental surgery. Then various doctors were recruited, which led to the launch of maxillofacial surgery in the early 2000s. Dr Sergio Siciliano joined the Europe Hospitals in 2003, and it was under his leadership that the department really took off.

‘Osteotomies, head and neck tumours, salivary gland pathologies, simple and complex maxillofacial traumatology, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery of the face: the department's treatments have continued to evolve in their diversity. The department has also seen a significant increase in terms of volume: we have gone from a few hundred patients a year to several thousand. We're growing by 8 to 10% a year,' says Sergio Siciliano proudly.

Specialist doctors and nurses
‘While each of the team's doctors has been trained to deal with all maxillofacial pathologies, we have decided to specialise. It's part of the current trend and we felt it was an interesting way of operating.  As a result, each member of the team now has his or her own sub-sector of activity, enabling us to be even more effective in the pathologies we treat,’ stresses the surgeon.

The same applies to the department's nurses. ‘The nurses who work with us in the operating theatre are nurses who have chosen to specialise in maxillofacial surgery. We therefore always work with the same operating department nurses, which facilitates collaboration and is also a guarantee of quality. It's the same principle for care under local anaesthetic and in consultation, since stomatology and maxillo-facial surgery are separate departments, with nurses who only deal with these pathologies,’ adds Dr Siciliano.

Orbito-palpebro-lacrimal surgery
The head of department stresses that unlike some hospitals, which only treat certain areas of CMF, the Europe Hospitals offer a complete range of services. All CMF pathologies can be treated here, and increasingly in the context of single, multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary care paths for patients, such as sleep apnoea and orbito-palpebro-lacrymal surgery.

2022 will certainly mark a turning point with the launch of orbito-palpebro-lacrymal surgery, led by Dr Siciliano himself, who has received extensive training in the field, including a postgraduate diploma in France. For this hyperspecialised surgery, which covers orbital tumours, eyelid pathologies and malpositions, Graves' exophthalmos, and lacrimal duct infections and obstructions, the department naturally works in close collaboration with the Ophthalmology Department, and more particularly with Dr Loïc Moens: “We see patients together in consultation, we have multidisciplinary consultations where we discuss them, and we very often do the surgery together too”.  

Towards recognition for head and neck oncology
The growing number of patients, particularly oncology patients, treated in the department has led the institution to position itself as a candidate for recognition in head and neck oncology.
In the near future, these pathologies will only be treated in a limited number of centres. As part of its commitment to providing high-quality care, the Europe Hospitals are continuing to invest in cutting-edge equipment in this field, recruiting new colleagues and working on the various criteria required to become a member of these centres.

A very broad patient base
Finally, on the strength of its success and excellent reputation, the Europe Hospitals maxillo-facial surgery department recruits up to 40% of its patients from outside the Brussels-Capital Region, and it does not stop at borders: between 2015 and 2024, for example, Dr Siciliano even operated on almost twenty patients who came directly from China!