Objective: To identify demographic factors that influence choosing nasoalveolar molding (NAM) in the treatment of cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL±P), and NAM treatment compliance.
Design: This work is a retrospective cohort study.
Setting: Tertiary pediatric hospital.
Patients, participants: One hundred forty-nine patients with a diagnosis of unilateral complete CL±P receiving treatment when NAM was offered (January 1, 2008-July 26, 2016).
Main outcome measure(s): Demographic variables collected included race, ethnicity, ZIP code, number of caregivers, caregiver employment status, and health insurance status. Medical variables collected included diagnosis, treatment pursued, compliance with NAM, completion of NAM, and the treating cleft surgeon and orthodontist. Data were analyzed via Fisher exact tests, χ2 tests, and multivariate logistic regression to identify factors that influence the decision to pursue NAM and treatment compliance.
Results: Univariate analyses identified the following significant factors predicting the pursuit of NAM: race and insurance type (both P < .001), surgeon (P = .005), income level (P = .009), comorbidities (P = .015), and syndromic diagnosis (P = .033). Driving distance trended toward significance (P = .078). Multivariate regression analyses indicated that Asian race (P = .047), insurance type (P = .046), driving distance (P = .019), and surgeon (P = .017) were significant predictors of pursuit of NAM.
Conclusions: There are disparities in patient choice of NAM at our center for children with complete cleft lip. African American patient families were less likely to pursue this intervention. A stronger understanding of the barriers that lower income and minority patients face is needed in order to better characterize disparities in cleft care.
Keywords: esthetics; ethics/health policies; nonsyndromic clefting; oral health; orthodontics; parental perception; periodontal health; prosthetics.