Metabolic Bone Disease

Our world-class Metabolic Bone Disease Service sees children from all over the UK with a wide range of conditions including:

• recurrent fractures
• osteoporosis (primary or secondary)
• osteogenesis imperfecta
• osteopetrosis
• rickets
• hypophosphatasia
• disorders affecting calcium and phosphate homeostasis
• fibrous dysplasia/McCune Albright syndrome

Treatments include appropriate occupational and physiotherapy, orthotics and referral to specialist surgical services (typically orthopaedic, neurosurgical and dental).

Children with rickets receive different forms of therapy depending on the type of rickets they have.

Clinics

There are two metabolic bone disease outpatient clinics per week. One is dedicated to seeing patients receiving oral bisphosphonate therapy in prospective randomised studies, the other takes new referrals and follows up patients with bone disease.

Help with practical tasks

The Developmental Co-ordination Disorders team have created several resources that may be useful for metabolic bone patients:

• a series of helpsheets containing top tips to help children get started with practical tasks from brushing teeth to getting dressed
• the song ‘Letters Groove’ provides additional support for learning handwriting and is available to download as MP3 files

Team values

Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has five core values that underpin everything we do: Committed to Excellence, Teamwork, Accountability, Compassion and Integrity.

Here in the Metabolic Bone team we have developed our own mission statement based on the Trust values:

• research is embedded in the day-to-day activities of our team; we will always strive to provide up-to-date and high quality care for all the children and young people under our care
• we accept responsibility both for our individual practice and the quality of our service as a team
• we work as an integrated multi-disciplinary team, respecting and recognising the contribution and skills of all team members equally
• we promote inclusion of children in their local community and schools supporting them to become the best that they can be in all that they do
• we see ourselves as part of a wider community of professionals, families and charities, committed to working together to improve the care of children and young people with a wide range of diseases of the skeleton