Dr Orteu is a senior Consultant Dermatologist with a broad experience of managing common inflammatory skin diseases such acne, eczema and psoriasis. She has a national and international reputation in the fields of Connective Tissue Disease (morphoea, systemic sclerosis, lupus erythematosus, overlap CTDs) and complex medical Dermatology (sarcoidosis, autoimmune blistering conditions, vasculitis). Her NHS practice is at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, where she has been a consultant since 2001. She has developed a Dermatology Connective Tissue disease service there, in close collaboration with Rheumatology colleagues, caring for over 500 patients with these conditions. She leads a monthly complex medical Dermatology clinic with Dermatology colleagues and is also interested in the impact of immune deficiency on the skin, attending a monthly joint clinic with Immunology colleagues caring for patients with Chronic Granulomatous Disease and other immunodeficiency diseases. She is a leading expert in the diagnosis and cutaneous manifestations of Fabry disease, a rare lysosomal storage disorder.
Notwithstanding her major interest in medical dermatology, she continues to undertake weekly surgical lists and has
over 25 years’ experience in undertaking mole checks, and in the diagnosis and excision of skin cancer and benign skin lesions.
She has over 30 peer-reviewed publications principally on the immunological mechanisms involved in the generation of chronic cutaneous inflammation and auto-immunity, morphoea, systemic sclerosis and scleroderma-like diseases, and on the cutaneous manifestations of Fabry disease. She has written and co-authored 10 invited chapters, notably for Rook's Textbook of Dermatology, Fitzpatrick's Dermatology in General Medicine, The Oxford Textbook of Rheumatology, and Rheumatic diseases and the skin.
She is a past president of the St John’s Dermatological Society, and a founding member of the British Society for
Medical Dermatology. She is the current Chair of the Dermatology Clinical Reference Group.