New trends in the complex treatment in the Cleft Centre in Bratislava

The last decade of the second millennium has brought some major changes into the concept of comprehensive treatment of the cleft lip and palate patients commonly accepted by the cleft center in Bratislava. Important events occurred, which surely had and in future they probably still would have an important impact on the comprehensive medical care of children with cleft lip and palate. There is beyond any doubt that an ongoing application of new trends in such fields as plastic surgery, anesthesiology, maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics, phonetics, speech therapy, paediatrics, human genetics or teratology will contribute to the progress and improvement of functional and aesthetic results and to better social adaptation of the cleft lip and palate patients. The study focuses on the following issues: cleft incidence, timing of the primary surgical repair, as well as the need of secondary operations (closures of communications, bone grafts, pharyngeal flaps, corrections of the lip and nose) and the achieved standard of speech quality and articulation, as well as on the early and late otological states and phonation. (Tab. 7, Fig. 3, Ref. 8.)