Information for professionals
How to make a referral:
Health care professionals
If you a Health care professional please write a referral letter
and send to ubh-tr.swcleftservice@nhs.net or
Bristol Dental Hospital
Lower Maudlin Street, Bristol BS1 2LY.
Alternatively you can ring us to discuss the referral on 0117
342 117
Speech and language therapist
If you are a speech and language therapist you can request a
second opinion for a child or adult you are seeing by downloading
and completing this
form.
Classifying clefts using the LAHSAL code
In the UK, there has been a general move to adopt a simple
system for classifying clefts, which is easy to use yet has
sufficient accuracy for most purposes. The LAHSAL code was
chosen as the preferred classification system. It is
compatible with ICD 10 and allows clefts to be coded for computer
use, most importantly on the CRANE register.
The LAHSAL code splits the relevant parts of the mouth
into six parts:
- Right lip
- Right alveolus
- Hard palate
- Soft palate
- Left
alveolus
- Left lip
The South West Cleft Care registration form includes a simple
chart that when completed gives us the LAHSAL code. Note the order
in which it is written - is from the perspective of
someone looking at the patient (i.e. the first character is
for the patient's right lip, and the last character for the
patient's left lip). The LAHSAL code indicates for each part
whether there is a complete cleft (upper case letter, e.g. H), an
incomplete cleft (lower case letter, e.g. h) or no cleft.
