When a child with cleft lip and palate is born into a family, family members and friends usually experience feelings of distress or regret for a short period of time. In fact, cleft lip and palate deformity is a treatable condition, and along with the continuous improvement of the overall medical level and the advancement of related treatment technology, the sequential treatment of cleft lip and palate is getting better and better. Families of children with cleft lip and palate should put down their burdens and give more care and help to their children.
Among them, the first treatment the child will be exposed to is nasopalatoplasty, a special treatment that will greatly enhance the results of subsequent cleft lip and cleft palate surgical face repair. The author’s biggest gain from visiting Chang Gung Hospital in Taiwan in January is that he has mastered the international standard of nasopalatoplasty, which will greatly help the early treatment of children with cleft lip and palate in Hunan and surrounding areas.
Once a child with cleft lip and palate is born, the local obstetrician and gynecologist or midwife should be obliged to inform the family in time and come to the dentistry department for help within a week of the child’s birth, when the jaw bone and alveolar area are soft and easy to shape. Once the child reaches one month of age, the jawbone gradually hardens, making treatment exponentially more difficult and less effective.
First of all, because the child has a cleft lip and palate deformity, the oral and nasal cavities are connected, so it is difficult to form a negative pressure closure when sucking breast milk or milk, and choking and coughing can easily occur; moreover, the child will keep doing sucking action to try to drink more milk, so the continuous squeezing will make the cleft alveolar ridge more misaligned, leading to a vicious circle. Therefore, early isolation of the oral and nasal cavities will greatly enhance the child’s ability to eat and facilitate the physical condition for subsequent cleft lip surgery (around 3 months) as soon as possible. On the other hand, once the presence of cleft lip and palate is present, the nose of the affected child often collapses due to lack of support and the base of the nose becomes wide, which affects the facial aesthetics. If the collapsed nose is not gradually supported by external force in time, the plastic effect will also be affected by the time of cleft lip repair.
The current popular mode of nasopalatine shaping treatment is to wear non-invasive palatal braces and nasal wing shaping braces, which are fixed with the aid of tape, elastic ring pulling and the addition of denture adhesives to apply certain orthopedic forces to achieve the intended therapeutic effect.
If a newborn infant with cleft lip and palate can receive effective nasopalatoplasty treatment, on the one hand, the separated palate can be guided towards the middle, the width of the alveolar ridge cleft can be reduced, the separation of the oral and nasal cavities can be reestablished, and the height of the nasal wings can be restored to the maximum extent. Studies have proven that children treated with rhinopalatoplasty have a better facial appearance and a more confident outlook on life when followed up.
So, if you are a caring friend, please pass on this article to families of children with cleft lip and palate who need it if you read it.