
Tara Renton
Tara Renton (Specialist in Oral Surgery) is a dentist with a particular interest in trigeminal nerve injuries and pain. She completed her dentistry at Guys (1984), Oral and Maxillofacial surgical training in Melbourne (1991), undertook a PhD in Trigeminal Nerve injury at KCL (1999-2003) and senior lectureship at QMUL (2003-6). Over the past 10 years at KCL Tara has developed;
Education programmes
- UG teaching of dental students modernising the Oral Surgical teaching with minimal access approach and modern LA techniques
- Academic oral surgery training programme
- The first orofacial pain Masters programme starting October 2017
- Supervised eight PhDs.
Research
In collaboration with Imperial College, UCL, Oxford University, Centre neuroscience imaging centre IOPPN, Wolfson Institute Tara has established an international leading programme of trigeminal nerve injury and orofacial pain research publishing over 150 peer reviewed articles and grants from MRC, Grunenthal, Pfizer, Brit Pain Society.
Service
Tara leads the Kings Health Partners Orofacial Pain Service seeing over 2K OFP patients a year involving oral surgery and medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, ENT, pain management, clinical psychology and liaison psychiatry. Tara has set up two patient facing websites first a patient lead initiative resulted in the development of the https://trigeminalnerve.org.uk/ a website advising both patients and clinicians in preventing and managing iatrogenic nerve injury in relation to dentistry and a website for patients with chronic trigeminal pain (https://orofacialpain.org.uk/).
Policy
- Tara lead patient safety for dentistry
- Clinical advisor to dental ombudsman and NICE
- Chair M3M parameter of care guidance for FDS RCS.
Tara is on the Dental Update Editorial Board, she has co-edited the BDA clinical manuals for Oral Surgery Books I and II, and editor of BDJ book on pain management for dental teams. Tara is a past elected member of the RCS England FDS Board, member of the Oral Surgery SAC and Dental Senate. She represents dentistry on the National Surgical Safety Board, she is London South CLRN lead and she is Past President of the British Association Oral Surgery.