Cleft-foot closure: a simplified technique and review of the literature

The purpose of this article is to present a simplified technique to close the cleft in the feet of children affected with congenital clefts. This technique evolved after several frustrating attempts to close the cleft with mediocre results by using triangular flaps. This report concerns nine children with 15 feet. We describe a simplified technique for cleft closure to narrow the feet. One of the children had an associated syndactyly of the foot, and two others had syndactyly of the hands. No other associated anomalies were present in these children. We operated on seven patients with a total of 42 operations. The feet with the clefts that were repaired by rectangular flaps maintained good cosmesis and function.