The Centre's ambitious aim is to continuously collect data on the outcomes of treatment received by every patient in the UK who has a mouth or facial injury or disorder. This will entail scrupulous data collection by UK surgeons and their assistants, consent by people to be followed up over time to determine the long-term results of their treatment, and studying these results to determine best treatment practice. As you can imagine it's a huge undertaking collecting this information on approximately 200,000 people annually who have this treatment. But this effort will be reap exceptional benefits for patients worldwide. These registers of British patients should uncover previously unknown causes of some disorders leading to better prevention strategies. Studying the outcomes of large numbers of patients having different treatment for the same conditions will also reveal the therapies which produce the best results. All treatment is relatively successful but these results will consign the less successful treatments for use only when no other treatment is appropriate. This alone will definitely improve patient outcomes throughout the world and the UK surgeons will lead the world uncovering this knowledge.
All this costs money! And FSRF-Saving Faces is funding this whilst the UK OMF surgeons are providing the academic input. The National Joint Register, a similar undertaking costs more than £2.7 million annually. We think we can run our centre at much less cost – around £500,000 annually
– so it's a bargain! But it's still a lot of money, so we need your help.

June 2011. Saving Faces is funding four PhD studentships. They will be carrying out  innovative projects in collaboration with Professor Ian Mackenzie, Professor of Stem Cell Science, Professor Ania Korszun, Professor of Psychiatry and Education who will supervise 2 students and Dr Ahmad Waseem, Reader in Oral Biology. The areas of research are:

• Stem cell patterns and the growth and therapy of head and neck cancer. Stem cells are the cells in a tumour that are capable of unlimited growth and it seems clear that it is essential to target these cells for successful treatment. This study will characterize differences in stem cell properties between individual tumours and correlate such differences with response to treatment. This valuable information will enable the development of tests to predict the outcome of treatment and will also aid in the development of new therapeutic strategies for specifically targeting cancer stem cells in head and neck cancers.
• The response of patients’ spouses or partners to cancer and violent and non-violent trauma. In order to develop a range of effective interventions, it is important to understand more fully the needs of our patients and to identify key predictors of psychological distress and it is clear that the response of patients’ spouses or partners to their condition is likely to have a significant effect. The aim of this project is to create a psychological treatment programme for patients undergoing head and neck surgery for cancer and trauma, tailored to individual patient’s needs at different stages of their treatment.
• Optimisation of a quantitative malignancy index diagnostic system for oral cancer detection and tumour margin assessment. This study aims to develop a sensitive, reliable and fast cancer diagnostic test for mouth cancer by using a new gene quantification method which can detect the presence of cancer cells by measuring the levels of cancer-causing genes in tissue biopsy samples. Mouth cancer affects over 5,500 people every year in the UK and has higher death rates than cancers of the colon, breast, vulva or melanoma. The number of mouth cancer cases has increased significantly (>20%) over the last decade especially in younger adults for both sexes. Despite improvements in chemotherapy and surgical techniques, ~50% of mouth cancer patients still die from the disease partly due to incomplete removal of cancer cells during surgical treatment. A reliable diagnostic test would enable clinicians to give appropriate tailored treatment which will make a real difference to patients.

From the above you will see that we will be supporting important areas of research into facial cancer and trauma, all of which have an undoubted clinical impact;

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• Basic scientific research at the molecular level
• Research into the psychological effects of living with the consequences of these conditions and the development of tailored support programmes.
• The development of diagnostic tests and targeted  treatment strategies

Saving Faces researchers are working on a Cancer Research UK funded study which is the first large scale surgical clinical trial in the United Kingdom for patients with oral cancer. The trial will involve over 600 patients nationwide and aims to answer important questions in the treatment of patients with oral cancer that will benefit both patients and the NHS.  

Welcome to the Football Association Study of Facial Injuries in England

The FA and “The Facial Surgery Research Foundation-Saving Faces” (Saving Faces) have planned a simple study to capture data on every facial injury that occurs in the 2011/2012 season

We hope that this study will help determine common causes of facial injuries, any links with neurosurgical problems and how long the players are kept away from competitive matches.

No such study has ever been carried out before and we, the football community in England, will be the leaders in educating the world football body about best treatment of these injuries.

Please complete one form for every facial injury incurred during the 2011/2012 season

The Cyscope is a new technology that may well enable early detection of cancer cells without the need for a biopsy. We are currently developing automated diagnostic tools requiring limited specialist intervention, primarily for the detection of oral cancers, using a well-defined subset of cell features, employing pattern recognition and image analysis. Further studies continue to refine the categorising of cells into five subsets, graded from normal to cancerous, using a database of over 8000 images collected so far.