Management of Oronasal Fistulas in Patients With Cleft Lip and Palate

The oronasal fistula in cleft patients is one of the complications that can be found after primary surgeries due to a failure of healing of the surgical repair that causes the communication between the oral and nasal cavities. A number of procedures can be implemented to correct the fistula and it is not clear if a particular technique is the best to be recommended.

This study aims to systematically analyze the scientific evidence regarding the treatment of oronasal fistulas located in the lingual-alveolar and labial-alveolar regions in patients with cleft lip and palate who have undergone primary surgeries.

A bibliographic search of articles published until September 2018 without restricted year and language of publication, in PubMed (Medline), Scopus, Cochrane, Web of science, and BVS databases. The MeSHterms "Fistula," "Oral Fistula," and "Cleft Lip" were used, which were related to each other and with other keywords related to the subject of the review through the "OR" and "AND" operators. The quality of the publications was evaluated according to the guidelines of the Methodological Index for Nonrandomized Studies.

After applying the eligibility criteria, a total of 18 articles were selected for the extraction of data and qualitative analysis.

All publications analyzed in this review reported the fistula treatment at the same surgical time as the bone graft, independently of the donor area, the type of cleft treated and the patient's age at operation. There was no consensus among the studies on the best treatment type for oronasal fistulas located in the alveolar region, and further comparative studies between the existing techniques will be necessary to address this question.