Maxillary sinus volumes of patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate

Studies about maxillary sinuses of cleft lip-palate patients have increased since sinusitis is commonly observed in these patients. It is evident that maxillary sinus will be morphologically affected in these patients. And anatomic differences may be a cause or at least a contributor of sinusitis. The aim of this study was to compare maxillary sinus volumes of the non-syndromic patients with unilateral cleft lip-palate and control group by using Cone-Beam computed tomography.

Tomography scans of 44 unilateral cleft lip-palate patients (18 right and 26 left) with age and gender matched 45 control patients were evaluated for the study. The images used in the study were part of the diagnostic records collected due to dental treatment needs. All tomographs were obtained in supine position by using Cone-Beam computed tomography (NewTom 5G, QR, Verona, Italy). The patient-specific Hounsfield values were set to include the largest amount of voxels in the sinuses volume calculation individually. All data were measured in mm(3).

There was no statistically difference between the gender and age distributions of the groups. No statistically significant difference was found on the cleft and non-cleft side, the right and left side of the unilateral cleft lip-palate patients and the control group (P>0.05). For the inter group comparison, mean maxillary sinus volumes volume of unilateral cleft lip-palate patients (9894.55±4171.44mm(3)) was statistically smaller than the control group (11,977.90±4484.93mm(3)) (P<0.05).

Maxillary sinus volumes were effected negatively in unilateral cleft lip-palate patients when compared with the healthy control group. No difference was found on the cleft, non-cleft side and the right-left side of the unilateral cleft lip-palate patients.