Cleft lip and palate. Microtia. Facial tumors. Burn scars. These four conditions appear again and again on the surgical schedules Dr. Andrew Jacono keeps during his international missions, and each one carries consequences that go well beyond the physical. The dual board-certified facial plastic surgeon has treated more than 750 children with these conditions through organizations such as Healing the Children, the HUGS Foundation and THAI Children.
Function and Appearance, Addressed Together
Cleft lip and palate can interfere with a child’s ability to eat and speak clearly, problems that worsen without early correction. Microtia, a malformation of the outer ear, can affect hearing along with appearance. Facial tumors and burn scars bring their own physical complications, from restricted movement to chronic discomfort. Dr. Andrew Jacono’s missions address these functional issues directly, but the surgeries do something else as well: they remove a mark that, left untreated, would follow a child through every stage of growing up.
Stigma That Outlasts the Diagnosis
In many of the communities where these missions take place, a visible facial difference carries social weight that a medical chart cannot capture. A child with an unrepaired cleft lip may be kept from school by parents worried about how classmates will react, or may face teasing severe enough to affect their willingness to attend at all. Facial tumors and burn scars invite their own forms of exclusion. Surgery performed by Dr. Andrew Jacono and the surgeons who travel with him offers a way to close that gap between a child’s medical needs and their ability to participate fully in ordinary life.
These missions typically happen twice a year, taking Dr. Jacono to Colombia, Ecuador, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries where this kind of specialized care would otherwise be out of reach for families with little money to spare. Each trip adds to a total that now numbers in the hundreds of children treated, one condition and one community at a time. Refer to this article to learn more.
See for more about Dr. Andrew Jacono on https://www.youtube.com/c/drandrewjacono