Craniofacial development in children with unilateral cleft lip and palate

Unilateral cleft lip and palate is the most common cleft in humans. We investigated the craniofacial morphology of Turkish children with unilateral complete cleft lip and palate who had operations to close the cleft lip when they were 3 months old and to close the palate at 12 months. They were not given orthopaedic or orthodontic treatment. We compared 42 patients with unilateral complete cleft lip and palate (UCCLP) with 45 control children without UCCLP at mean ages of 13 and 15 years. The children with UCCLP had considerable morphological deviations compared with the matched children without clefts. They had significantly shorter and more posteriorly positioned maxillas (p<0.01). There was also an increase in cranial base angle (p<0.05), mandibular plane and gonial angle (p<0.01). There was a reduction in the posterior facial height (p<0.05) and an increase in the anterior facial height (p<0.01). The profile of the soft tissue was more convex (p<0.001) and the upper lip was thinner than in the children in the control group (p<0.01), and their noses were relatively further backwards and downwards (p<0.01).