About Shailesh Patel

Shailesh Patel trained at Guy’s Hospital Medical School and completed his paediatric surgical training in the London consortium which included King’s College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Since 2001 he has been a Consultant Paediatric and Neonatal Surgeon at Kings College Hospital. He has 25 years of experience treating tongue-ties in babies.

For many years he has worked to increase the recognition of tongue-ties in newborns as a significant cause of breastfeeding difficulties. He set up what is now a very large one-stop Tongue-tie Clinic (TTC) at King’s College Hospital specifically designed to assess and treat babies who are struggling to breastfeed due to tongue-ties. The TTC has worked hard with surrounding breastfeeding support services to improve the quality of assessment and support of affected breastfeeding mothers and babies. Following this clinic’s inception, several other Trusts have now gone on to also provide a tongue-tie service in the London and South East area, thus improving access to such services. His team actively continues to perform clinical research in this area to improve our understanding of the management of tongue-ties.