Cleft lip and cleft palate are the most common oral and facial malformations that occur in a very early stage of intrauterine life.
Cleft lip and/or palate can be complete or incomplete, unilateral or bilateral. Brendt LE et al reported that cleft palate occurs around 7th to 12th week of gestation period while cleft lip and cleft alveolar occur in 4th-8th week of embryonic life.
The management of oral cleft are often complex and expensive, which also require the presence of multidisciplinary team including oral and maxillofacial surgeons, Ear nose throat (ENT surgeons), plastic surgeons, orthodontist, speech therapist, nutritionist, psychologist, and dentist and specialized cleft nurses. Members of the cleft team should be aware to the economic status of the parents, psychosocial, linguistic and all factors that may affect the relationship between the primary caregivers of cleft infants or patient and other cleft team members.
Most authors reported that orthodontic treatment and every stapes of surgical procedures should be well informed to the parents or primary caregivers of the cleft patient, doing so will help them to have clear understanding about all operational risk factors, treatment benefits, treatment costs, and duration of the treatment, parents or patients should also involve in making treatment planning this will help the parents or patients to know the short-term and long-term outcomes of the treatment for the satisfaction and psycho-social well-being of the parents and patient.
Iddi Suleiman Iddi,1 Ferdinand Mabula Machibya,2 Liwei Xiao,1 Zeng Yunting1
1 Department of Dentistry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, China & Department of Dentistry, Mnazi Mmoja Referral Hospital, Tanzania
2 Department of Orthodontics, Pedodontics and Community Dentistry, Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), Tanzania
Correspondence: Liwei Xiao, Associate Professor of
orthodontics in the Department of Dentistry, The Second
Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, P.O.Box 410011,
Changsha, Hunan, P.R China, Tel +8613786169806,
Email xiao_lw@csu.edu.cn
Received: June 02, 2018 | Published: June 12, 2018
