Objective: To quantitatively assess three-dimensional (3D) soft tissue facial asymmetry in patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) who have undergone primary lip repair.
Design: Clinical, retrospective, comparative, methodological study.
Patients/participants: Twenty patients with UCLP were selected after a review of the records.
Inclusion criteria: Complete UCLP; surgically treated without secondary repair. An age-matched and sex-matched Control group was employed.
Main outcome measures: A 3D facial symmetry plane (FSP) was obtained by superimposing the point clouds of the original 3D facial image excluding the surgical site and including lip and nose areas and those of a mirrored facial image using the iterative closest point (ICP) adjustment method. The discrepancies in the depth and angle of the normal vector of the facial surface of each point cloud between right and left sides (cleft and non-cleft sides in the UCLP group, respectively) based on FSP were calculated.
Results: Facial asymmetry in the UCLP group was significantly greater than in the Control group regarding both the discrepancies in the depth (1.34 ± 0.62, 0.73 ± 0.32 pixels, respectively) (P = .0004) and surface angle (18.0 ± 5.88, 12.8 ± 4.0°, respectively) (P = .0024). Biaxial assessment of the discrepancies in the depth and surface angle allowed us to visually extract UCLP patients with greater facial asymmetry.
Conclusions: Facial asymmetry analysis based on 3D FSP effectively facilitates the facial asymmetry quantification and soft tissue surgical outcome evaluation in patients with UCLP.
Keywords: 3D assessment; cleft lip and palate; facial symmetry plane.