Many adults have only barely noticeable scars attest to the fact that they are born with a cleft defect. Children with these defects grow up to lead normal, productive lives.
About half of all clefts involve the lip and palate. In 20% of cases only the lip is involved, the remaining 30% of clefts involving only the palate.
Treatment of cleft lip and palate should ideally include a multidisciplinary team. Increasingly, hospitals have special teams who specialize in caves and can provide treatment in all areas that children with clefts will require as they grow.
The experts who might be involved in your child's care will include surgeons, speech and language therapists, dieticians, audiologists (hearing specialists), dentists, Orthodontists, geneticists, psychologists and specially trained nursing staff. Keeping your child will begin immediately after birth and will continue until the child reaches adulthood.
feeding
Feeding your baby can be difficult immediately after birth, depending on the size and location of a cleft. Your child may have difficulty suckling at the breast or bottle. Specialized equipment is available, including specially designed feeders, nipples, bottles and inserts. Your child's ability to suck will be assessed immediately after birth.
Children with a cleft palate will have to be fed in an upright position. This is because it opens the mouth to allow milk to enter the nasal passage
Hearing and speech
Children with cleft defects may have speech and hearing, as a result of their shortcomings. At some point, your child May have tympanostomy tube is inserted to allow the ear drain properly. This can prevent hearing loss and infection.
Speech problems can be treated by speech language pathologist on an ongoing basis as your child grows, if speech is abnormal.
As a parent of a child with cleft lip or palate (or both) that may be concerned about your child's appearance.
Surgery to repair cleft lip
Surgery to repair a cleft lip can be done 2-3 months of age. Surgeons generally prefer to wait until the patient is at least 10 weeks of age and weighs at least 10 kg. The surgery is performed under general anesthesia and will take about 1-2 hours to perform (in most cases). Your child will probably only be required to remain in hospital for 24 hours. You'll be shown how to care for their child after leaving hospital, including wound care and feeding techniques. Your child will have to be prevented from touching the workplace. Special restrictions may be necessary to use. Such restrictions are not painful and are important to allow proper healing of the page. Your surgeon will discuss it after you in detail before and after surgery.
Sutures will be removed in about 5-7 days, but it will take about 3 weeks to heal sufficiently operational area.
More than one procedure may be needed if the cleft is bilateral (occurring on both sides of the mouth). If another procedure is needed, a second procedure would likely be done several weeks after the first.