Clinical and epidemiologic studies of nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate in china: analysis of 4268 cases

The aim of our study was to review clinical and epidemiologic characteristic of the nonsyndromic cleft lip and cleft palate over a period of 10 years at West China Stomatological Hospital, Sichuan University. Four thousand two hundred sixty-eight nonsyndromic cleft lip and cleft palate cases were retrospectively analyzed according to the following variables: general information, cleft type, maternal age, familial history, as well as associated malformations, et al. In these cases, 1075 of which were cleft lip, 1985 were cleft lip with cleft palate; 1208 were isolated cleft palate. There were more men than women in the cleft lip and cleft lip with cleft palate group, while there were more women than men in the isolated cleft palate group. There were significantly more unilateral cleft lip cases than cleft lip on both sides; the cases of cleft lip on the left side were more than that of cleft lip on the right side. The cases with inherited history accounted for 6.68% of all the cases. Most infection cases occurred among the deleterious factors and the complications experienced during the first 3 months after the pregnancy. In all of the 14 twin cases, only 1 of the babies was affected. There were totally 152 cases with other associated malformations. Patients with cleft lip born in November to January were less than those born in the other three quarters of the year. Patients of A blood group composed a higher proportion than the control group. Our data may provide references for appropriate resource use, cleft lip and cleft palate prevention programs, and counseling programs with China-specific data.