Cleft lip and palate deformity is most common and challenging abnormality in the field of plastic surgery and objectives of its surgical repair would be normalization of appearance of lip and nose as well as the function of palate.
Since Le Monnier reported first successful closure of soft palate in 1764, many surgical procedures for the cleft palate repair has been developed to improve impaired speech problems. However, the maxillary growth, particularly after the surgical manipulation of cleft lip and palate has been paid less attention to the present.
This is a study, therefore, to evaluate possible effect that our way of surgical repair of the clefts might have rendered something to interfere the subsequent growth and development of maxilla.
Steiner’s cephalometry was done on every individual, a total of 71 cleft lip and/or palate patients of which 65 were operated at the Severance Hospital and 6 were nonoperated and a total of 71 normal children with age ranging 8 to 12yrs.
The numeral data obtained by the cephalometry were classified according to the type of clefts, time of repair and statistically analyzed to compare with the non-operated cletfs and the normal reference group.
The results were summarized as follows:
1. The lip repair did not disturb maxillary growth and development.
2. The palatoplasty, especially early palatoplasty, disturbed maxillary growth and development, but even if palatal repair was performed after age of 4yrs, the maxillary growth retardation was definite by compared with normal reference group.
3. The maxillary retrusion, however, was not evident due to relative mandibular retrusion, which was common phenomena in cleft palate patients.
4. In conclusion, because of undesirable speech problems in the most cases of late palatal repair even though the maxillary growth is apparently less interfered, palate should be repaired before age of two years for the fulfillment of surgical objectives.
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