Long-term growth patterns in children born with cleft lip and/or palate. A systematic review

Introduction: in children with cleft lip and/or palate nutritional status and growth may be impaired due to early life feeding difficulties. Objective: to review the existing literature on the nutritional prognosis during childhood of patients undergoing surgery for cleft lip and/or palate (CLP), their body composition and growth patterns from 2 to 10 years of age, and the possible effects of their early nutritional status on the long-term onset of overweight. Methods: a systematic search of growth and body composition parameters in 2-10 year-old CLP children, including cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and using the Pubmed and Scopus databases. From the 2,983 retrieved articles, 6 were finally included. Results: two studies out of 6 were longitudinal and the other 4 were cross-sectional, including very heterogeneous samples. Weight and height were used as growth parameters in 2 studies; 2 studies used body mass index (BMI); and the remaining 2 used indexes of nutritional status derived from anthropometric measures. The studies showed discrepancies among results: 3 of them found growth differences between children with CLP and their counterparts, whereas the other 3 did not. The two longitudinal studies did not show any significant differences between the mean BMI z-scores or growth curves of cleft patients and their counterparts. When differences existed, the most affected group was that under 5 years, syndromic children, and adopted children with CL/P. Conclusions: the literature is scarce comparing growth patterns between children with CLP and controls, and results cannot confirm that children with CLP aged 2-10 years, excluding those with syndromes or belonging to vulnerable populations, have different growth patterns or a worse nutritional status than their counterparts.