[Corrective surgery of cleft lip]

This paper presents a statistical review of corrective surgery for cleft lip, as performed at the Maxillofacial Surgery wards of the Pediatrics Hospital, National Medical Center, and the General Hospital, La Raza Medical Center, Institute of Social Security of Mexico. Frequency of occurrence, as well as most commonly used classifications, are described and correlated with results reaped from our study, which covered from March 1984 to March 1989, with surgeries performed on 116 patients suffering from unilateral and bilateral cleft lip; 120 plastic reconstructive maneuvers were performed by the Millard advance rotation technique or the modified Tennison Randall technique with triangular flaps, with Le Mesurier's square flaps approach for unilateral fissures and the Verdeja and Cronin techniques for bilateral clefts, thus defining criteria for treating children with cleft lip and cleft palate.