Cleft Lip / Palate Info
The following text has been extracted from the brochure titled “The Melbourne Cleft Lip & Palate Centre – Questions & Answers for Parents” from the RCH Kids Health Info website. It is reproduced here with very kind permission from the Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital. The brochure in its entirety can be downloaded from the RCH website here.
The Kids Health Info website can be accessed here
ABOUT ONE IN 600 infants are born with either a cleft lip, a cleft palate, or both. Nowadays, with modern ultrasound examinations during pregnancy, the diagnosis is often made before the birth of the child. This can allow parents to develop an understanding of the condition and the treatment their child will need after birth.
In the past 20 years or so, there have been remarkable advances in the treatment of clefts, and parents can now expect their children to end up with very acceptable appearance, teeth and speech.
Because the cleft involves facial development, hearing, speech, teeth and palate function, a dedicated and expert cleft lip and palate team of specialists is required. The Melbourne Cleft Lip and Palate Centre has a large and experienced team with expertise in all the specialist treatments that are required and, therefore, can work together with parents to provide the child born with a cleft with the most up-to-date management.
An Overview
The amount of treatment required for a child with a cleft depends on how severe the cleft is at birth. For instance, a minimal cleft may just require one surgical procedure early in life and nothing else, whereas a child with a severe bilateral complete cleft lip and palate may require a number of procedures. As facial growth is a major factor, those patients with more severe deformities will not complete their treatment until growth has ceased, usually in the late teenage years. While the prospect of such long-term treatment may be daunting to parents, it is important to realise that even with severe cleft children the operative procedures are now relatively minor and usually only require a maximum of two to three days hospitalisation.
To provide an understanding of the overall management involved in the more severe clefts it is helpful to examine the issues that occur at various stages of development.
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