Prof. Simon Holmes

Simon was appointed to the Royal London Hospital in 2003 as the first UK Consultant to a post specialising exclusively in the management of Craniomaxillofacial Trauma. His role was to lead and develop a Craniofacial Trauma Team. 

In the past twenty years Simon has developed research, training, and service work at the trust, nationally, and internationally. He has introduced several new surgical techniques and digital treatment planning technologies and overseen the integrated approach to facial trauma which has proven both innovative and successful. 

He has lectured widely nationally and internationally, and has written three major textbooks on craniofacial trauma. He has published in major anatomical textbooks including Gray’s anatomy. He has published widely in the Maxillofacial literature, and is on the editorial review board for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Orbit, Injury, and the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. He is an assistant editor for BJOMS. He has presented invitational keynote lectures on four continents. 

His research interests are around assessment of severity of injury with development of assessment of outcome tools. He has developed an iPhone App as a craniofacial skeletal fracture severity score calculator. He is also interested in complex anterior skull base injuries, functional and anatomical orbital reconstruction, and has published definitive papers on these subjects. 

He is also interested in forensic analysis of facial injuries, as well as developing embedding of facial trauma services in international first aid collaborations.  

He was appointed to the chair of Craniofacial Traumatology in 2015.  

He was awarded his PhD in 2022 – An evolution in the management of complex cranio-orbital and anterior skull base trauma – from who to reconstruct to how to. 

He has developed and chairs a distance learning MSc course in craniofacial trauma at QMUL. 

Politically he is active within his specialty - he was previously the nominated facial trauma lead for BAOMS, and a member of AO UK Craniofacial.