Andrew A. C. Heggie
“Donations to the Foundation will secure the future of our service by enabling us to fund research into areas of craniofacial treatment and ultimately give us the possibility of appointing a full-time Chair of Craniofacial Research. It will enable us to teach surgeons from other countries to take techniques back to their own people and to fund some of the necessary technology that is outside government budgets but will enhance our service.”
Andrew graduated from Melbourne University in dentistry (1977) and medicine (1991) and is currently Head of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Following his initial training in Melbourne, he undertook a Fellowship at the Northwest Centre for Corrective Jaw Surgery in Seattle in 1982 and subsequently within the University of Washington and Harborview Medical Centre in 1983. Returning to Melbourne, he took up consultant positions in OMS at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Western Hospital. He was recruited by Tony Holmes to join the Craniofacial Unit at the Royal Children’s Hospital in 1994 and he’s helped to develop and promote the team’s activities.
Andrew is on the editorial panel of two International Journals in OMS and has fostered clinical and basic research by establishing the Melbourne Research Unit for Facial Disorders (Univ. Melbourne in 2001).
During 2001, he broadened his surgical interests, acting as Fellow in craniofacial surgery within the Unit. He’s been published extensively and has been regularly invited to speak at international meetings.
Andrew specialises in the management of facial deformity in craniofacial anomalies, diagnosis and treatment of airway obstruction in children with craniofacial syndromes, use of distraction osteogenesis techniques in advancing the facial bones in craniofacial patients and management of the jaw deformities in cleft lip and palate patients.
Among these surgical interests, his current focus is the development of protocols to correct skeletal facial deformities by distraction techniques and to resolve upper airway obstruction in cleft and craniofacial anomalies.
Andrew was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics in 2004 and was Chair of the Examining Panel for the Australasian Fellowship in OMS (1998-2001).
His charity work takes him around the world. Until 2002, he visited Bangladesh many times and made four visits to China as part of “Project China”, an initiative of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He has also visited and operated in Indonesia and has plans to visit Vietnam in the future.
“I have always enjoyed working with children. As a specialist in the facial region, combining skills with other surgeons to transform lives and employ new and exciting techniques made the choice to work in craniofacial surgery easy for me when the opportunity arose.”