[Nutrition of children with cleft lip and cleft palate, a bibliographic study]

The present study aimed at describing the children with congenital lip-palate malformation, emphasizing their alimentation, such as the difficulties and alternative methods to feed these children and nursing care in this process. The bibliographic review showed that there are many aspects in the alimentation care to fissured children, involving complex affective, social, economic and cultural relations that influence in mother-child relationship, in social discrimination of the fissured children and in mothers' difficulty to feed and give care to the child. Authors found the need to implement breast feeding, pointing out the physiological, psychological and social limitations that involve the child and the family as well as the importance of alimentation to physical and emotional development, favouring the surgical correction of lips and/or palate fissures as well as the rehabilitation process.