Objective: Presurgical infant orthopedics (PIO) reduces the severity of the original cleft and burden on patients and their parents, provides better esthetics and function, and enables surgeons to achieve better surgical repair. To reduce the alveolar cleft width and to predict treatment difficulty using PIO, various measures were examined in pretreatment cast models.
Design: Retrospective case-control pilot study.
Patients: The patients were 22 infants with non-syndromic unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP), and cast models of these infants were used.
Methods: After PIO using passive plates, infants with UCLP were divided into two groups: contact group (12 cases with close proximity of the greater and lesser segments) and non-contact group (10 cases without proximity of segments). The two groups were compared, and variables related to the proximity between alveolar clefts were examined.
Results: There was no significant difference in age at PIO initiation between the two groups. However, the treatment duration was significantly longer in the non-contact group than in the contact group. Among the 13 variables, the initial lateral deviation of the nasal septum was significantly larger in the contact group than in the non-contact group. A significant positive correlation was observed between the initial lateral deviation of the nasal septum and reduction of the alveolar cleft width by PIO.
Conclusion: Initial lateral deviation of the nasal septum is a predictive factor for the proximity between alveolar segments in infants with UCLP at the PIO.
Keywords: alveolar molding; cleft lip and palate; nasal septum; presurgical infant orthopedic; vomer.